E PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR 




LEO TOLSTOI 



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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR 



NAPOLEON 



AND 



THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 



BY 



COUNT LEO TOLSTOI 




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TRANSLA TED FROM THE THIRD FRENCH EDITION 

BY 

HUNTINGTON SMITH 



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NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

No. 13 AsTOR Place 



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THE LiaRA&Y 
OF COHGES88 

WASHINGTON 



GOPVRIGHT, 1888, BY 

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 



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Electrotyphd by 
C. J. Peters and Son, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



LH AFTER PAGE 

Translator's Preface iii 

I. Plan of the. Campaign of 1812 .... 5 
II. The Truth About the Battle of Boro- 
dino 15 

III. Napoleon's Preparations for the Battle 

of Borodino .■::'• 29 

IV. How Far Napoleon's Will Influenced 

the Battle of Borodino ;;^y 

V. The Retreat to Fily 45 

VI. Moscow Abandoned by Its Inhabitants . 53 

VII. The Burning of Moscow 61 

VIII. The Flank Movement 65 

IX. The Battle of Taroutino 73 

X. Napoleon at Moscow 83 

XI. The Retreat from Moscow 103 

XII. The Victories and What Followed . . 113 

XIII. The Spirit of the Troops and Guerilla 

Warfare 121 

XIV. The Flight of Napoleon 127 

XV. Pursuing the French 139 

XVI. KouTouzoF 151 

XVII. Beresina 167 

XVIII. Napoleon and Alexander 1 171 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



It is now three years since the writer of this 
introduction had the pleasure of bringing be- 
fore American readers that curiously interesting 
book by Count Leo Tolstoi", "My Religion," 
a work which, perhaps more than any other pro- 
duction of its author, has excited wide specula- 
tion and discussion. Up to that time Count 
Tolstoi was practically unknown to readers this 
side the Atlantic. His name was unfamiliar, 
the details of his remarkable life were not ac- 
cessible in any dictionary of biography. In 
three years, what a change ! 

Now no less than fourteen of his works have 
been translated and published in this country ; 
the minutest particulars concerning his person- 
ality, his opinions, and his mode of life are re- 
ported with the utmost fidelity. His grand, 



111 



iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

brooding, sympathetic countenance is familiar 
to the very loiterers by the news-venders' win- 
dows. He is known by many eager, searching 
minds to be the one colossal figure in contem- 
porary literature. 

What has led to this significant and rapid 
increase of popular esteem } It was felt at 
once that Count Tolstoi' had a message to de- 
liver, a message worth hearing, and the world 
has shown itself ready to hear. The utter- 
ance of this message began in his earliest 
writings, and it has gone on, swelling in vol- 
ume and power with each succeeding produc- 
tion of his pen. As we look back now in the 
light of later revelation, we can see the thread 
of ethical purpose running through all his writ- 
ings, growing more and more plain with each 
one of them, and at length woven into a com- 
plete pattern in the book which is his most 
characteristic, because his most outspoken 
work, the book which reveals most clearly his 
own mental attitude toward his fellows, and his 
conception of man's part in the universe. 

The message may be summed up very 
briefly ; it expresses the essential dignity of 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. v 

manhood, and declares the most crying need in 
the world to-day to be love of man to man. 

It is not a new message. It has been 
preached before — among others, by the Chris- 
tians who condemn Tolstoi as a fanatic and a 
dreamer ; but Count TolstoT is the first among 
moderns to show in a large way how the 
preaching may be carried into practice. The 
message may be, as some say it is, socialism or 
communism in disguise, but every thoughtful 
person will agree that it is a very harmless sort 
of communism, that it is, at any rate, better 
than anarchy, and that its influence upon man- 
kind, for the present at least, cannot result in 
serious harm. The time may come when, 
as several pulpit orators have declared, the 
practice of the Golden Rule will subvert civil- 
ization, but the danger of such a social trans- 
formation is not pressing ; we may safely leave 
it to posterity with several other problems con- 
cerning which we are perplexing ourselves to- 
day. 

In the book now before us, the latest of 
Count Tolstoi's published writings, we have still 
another polemical work. Taking that most 



vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

dramatic and terrible manifestation of the war- 
like spirit, Napoleon's campaign in Russia, as 
an example, he undertakes to lay bare " The 
Physiology of War." 

We do not need to read far in the volume 
before getting at his purpose. He vindicates 
once more the essential dignity of manhood. 
He would show that war is something more 
than a game on the part of sovereigns and 
diplomatists, that it lies deeper down in the 
very nature of things, that it is an expression of 
popular expansion, and that emperors, kings, 
commanders, generals, what not, are so many 
figure-heads, the toys of circumstance, passive 
instruments in the hands of destiny. 

It will be seen at once that Count Tolstoi's 
philosophy of history takes a wide range and 
goes deep. It is the modern, the democratic 
spirit applied to the most terrible of human 
problems, war. It regards the common soldier 
as more than the general, and it sets forth with 
convincing eloquence the contrast between the 
ostensible leaders in a great struggle, the men 
who stand at the head and think they are di- 
recting the progress of events, and the real 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vii 

actors in those events, the men who do the 
work and bear the suffering— the common 

soldiers. 

In the course of this exposition, Count 
Tolstoi does indeed reveal the very physiology 
of war. No one knows better than he how a 
war is conducted, what are the conditions of a 
battle ; but the vital interest of this book is in 
its portrayal of that mysterious force slowly 
generated in the heart of Europe during the 
revolutionary period, breaking out now and 
then in random explosions, and at length 
bursting all bounds, like a wave of fire bearing 
Napoleon on its crest, rushing towards the 
East, to Moscow, and to destruction — extin- 
guished as it were in the frost and snow of 

Russia. 

With regard to Napoleon, the hero-worship- 
per of the Carlylean stamp will find little in 
this book to please him. The Man of Destiny 
cuts here a most disreputable figure. His glo- 
rious plumes have been stripped from him ere 
this, but never yet has he come forth from the 
pitiless hands of criticism so featherless, naked, 
and contemptible a biped. " This," Count Tol- 



viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

stoi' seems to say to us, " is your great man. I 
show you great men." He will have no talk of 
isolated genius guiding humanity to predeter- 
mined ends. Genius is to him not the guider, 
but the guided, the exponent of fate, the bit 
of steel that follows the invisible magnet of 
destiny and indicates upon the dial of history 
the course of what is and is to be. And then, 
in the parable of the bee. Count Tolstoi" sets 
forth the conclusion of the whole matter, a con- 
clusion old as the Book of Job, — " Touchijig 
the Eternal i we cannot find him out ; he is excel- 
lent in powers 

If the Russian text of this book had been ac- 
cessible, I should not have undertaken this ver- 
sion. But the Russian text is not at present to 
be had ; it is doubtful if it has passed the ordeal 
of censorship, and so, in default of a better, it is 
hoped that the public will accept this attempt 
with a kindly eye to its possible and probable 
shortcomings. M. Michel Delines, whose French 
interpretation I have followed, is an author of 
repute, and I hope that, in keeping as closely 
as possible in his footsteps, I have not strayed 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix 

far from the proper path. If this version of 
" The Physiology of War " shall receive the 
approval given by Count TolstoY to the writer's 
translation of "My Religion," I shall have rea- 
son to be more than content. 

Huntington Smith. 

Dorchester, Mass., December 23, 1887. 



NAPOLEON'S 

RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



I. 

PLAN OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1 8 12. 

French authors, in the books which they 
have devoted to the history of the Russian cam- 
paign, are always trying to prove that Napoleon 
foresaw the danger involved in an extension of 
his line, that he sought by every means to give 
battle, and that his generals all advised him to 
halt at Smolensk. In other words, the his- 
torians in question advance all sorts of argu- 
ments to demonstrate that Napoleon and his 
staff understood beforehand the perils of the 
campaign. 

Russian historians, on the contrary, are still 
more urgent in their attempts to persuade us 
that at the beginning of the campaign the plan 
by which Napoleon was to be enticed into the 

5 



5 NAPOLEON'S 

heart of Russia was already conceived. The 
plan is attributed to Pfiihl, to Toll, to an un- 
known Frenchman, even to the Emperor Alex- 
ander himself. In support of their assertions 
they cite memoirs, suggestions, letters, in which 
allusions to such a plan of campaign are found. 

But it is clear that all these so-called indica- 
tions of foreknowledge have been seized upon 
by Russian and by French historians, simply 
because they are justified by what actually took 
place. If the war had taken a different course, 
these predictions would have been forgotten 
like many other conjectures that were not 
verified and yet were equally popular at the 
time. 

Every event involves so many suppositions as 
to results that there will always be people who 
will have the right to say, ** I told you this would 
happen,7 and we forget that among the pre- 
dictions offered there were also many indicat- 
ing just the contrary of what comes to pass. 

To ascribe to Napoleon knowledge of the 
danger involved in an advance, and to credit 
the Russians with a plan for inveigling the 
enemy into the heart of the country, is to make 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j 

prophecies after the event. Historians cannot 
attribute divination to Napoleon or strategical 
projects to the Russians without forcing the 
facts. 

The truth is that throughout the whole cam- 
paign the Russians never dreamed of drawing 
the French into the heart of their country ; but 
directed all their efforts to checking the ad- 
vance of the enemy, from the moment that the 
invasion was an accomplished fact. 

Napoleon, on the other hand, not only did 
not doubt the policy of advance, he treated 
every onward movement as a triumph, and, in 
contrast to his usual tactics, we find that in 
this campaign he was not at all eager to give 
battle. 

• As for us, from the beginning of the cam- 
paign we see our armies cut in two, and we are 
occupied solely with the effort to bring them 
into combined action. If we had desired to 
simulate retreat, to draw the enemy on, there 
would have been no advantage in reuniting our 
dissevered troops. At length, Alexander I. 
comes in person into the field, to inspire the 
army by his presence to stubborn resistance. 



8 NAPOLEON'S 

and not to encourage a retreat. Then we form 
the great camp at Drissa, according to Pfuhl's 
design, and any thought of retreat is out of the 
question. The tsar reproaches his generals 
for a single backward step. Alexander does 
not plan the burning of Smolensk ; he does not 
desire that the enemy shall approach the walls 
of the city. When the combination of forces is 
at length effected, the tsar is angry at thinking 
that Smolensk has been taken and burned 
without an effort at defence. 

Such are the views of the sovereign. As for 
the generals in command, they are as indignant 
as the troops at any suggestion of retreating 
before the enemy. 

Meanwhile, Napoleon, after cutting our ar- 
mies asunder, marches on into the interior of 
the country, and allows several opportunities 
for giving battle to pass by unimproved. By 
August he is at Smolensk, intent upon a further 
advance into Russia, although this movement, 
as we see now, could only be fatal to his hopes. 

The facts prove beyond doubt that Napoleon 
did not foresee the danger of an advance upon 
Moscow, and that Alexander I. and the Rus- 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. g 

sian generals never dreamed of trying to draw 
him into the heart of the country. 

Napoleon was led on, not by any plan, — a 
plan had never been thought of, — but by the 
intrigues, quarrels, and ambition of men who 
unconsciously played a part in this terrible war 
and never foresaw that the result would be the 
safety of Russia. 

Everything goes on in the most unexpected 
way. Our armies are divided at the outset of 
the campaign. We endeavor to reunite them 
with the evident object of giving battle and 
checking the invasion, but our troops, while 
seeking to effect a juncture, avoid battle with 
the enemy, recognizing his strength ; our lines, 
therefore, tend to form an acute angle, and the 
French are drawn as far as Smolensk. The 
acute angle is not solely due to the fact that the 
enemy is moving between our two armies ; 
another cause tends to diminish the angle and 
favor our retreat. At the head of one of our 
armies is Barclay de Tolly, a German, very un- 
popular with us. The commander of the other 
army is Bagration, who has a personal hatred 
against Barclay de Tolly and endeavors as far 



lO NAPOLEON'S 

as possible to delay the combination in order 
that he may not be subjected to Barclay's 
orders. Bagration succeeds in delaying the 
movement which is the chief object of all the 
Russian generals. He explains his action by 
saying that his troops are in danger and that it 
is better for him to draw off on the left and 
toward the south in order to harass the enemy 
on the flank and in the rear, and finally bring 
about the union of the armies in the Ukraine. 
But these excuses are only pretexts. The real 
cause of his policy of delay is a desire not to 
subject himself to the hated German, who is, 
moreover, of a rank inferior to his own. 

The Emperor Alexander is with the army to 
inspire the troops by his presence, but he is 
surrounded by so many conflicting advisers, so 
many different plans are submitted to him, that 
he is unable to come to a decision. His hesita- 
tion paralyzes the energy of the army, and it 
finally beats a retreat. 

The plan then is to entrench in the camp at 
Drissa, when suddenly Paulucci, who aspires to 
be commander-in-chief, gets such a hold upon 
the emperor that Pfiihl's plan is abandoned. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. u 

The task of opposing the enemy is confided to 
Barclay, but, as he is not able to inspire much 
confidence, his power is limited. 

Here, then, are the isolated armies, and a 
discordant command. Barclay is unpopular, 
and his unpopularity, together with the separa- 
tion of the armies, produces the uncertainty 
which leads us to evade an encounter with the 
enemy. 

If the union of the armies had been accom- 
plished, and if Barclay had not been designated 
as commander-in-chief, a battle would have been 
inevitable. But circumstances served contin- 
ually to increase the feeling against the Ger- 
mans, and patriotism was more and more ex- 
alted. 

Finally the tsar leaves the army, with the 
excuse that he is needed at Moscow and St. 
Petersburg to arouse the people and incite a 
national defence. In fact, the emperor's jour- 
ney to Moscow triples the strength of the Rus- 
sian troops. 

Now, the truth is that the tsar withdraws 
from the army in order that he may not inter- 
fere with the power of the commander-in-chief. 



12 NAPOLEON'S 

He hopes that, in his absence, Barclay will take 
decisive measures. But the generals are more 
and more confused and helpless. Bennigsen, 
the grand-duke, and all his train of adjutants- 
general, remain in the army to spy out the 
intentions of the commander-in-chief and to 
favor energetic action. Barclay, under the eyes 
of these imperial censors, grows still more cau- 
tious, abstains from any decided operation, and 
carefully avoids giving battle. 

Barclay's attitude leads the grand-duke to 
insinuate suspicions of treason and to advise a 
general attack. Lubomirski, Branitzki, Vlotzki, 
and other officers, make such an uproar that 
Barclay, to rid himself of them, sends the Polish 
adjutants-general to St. Petersburg with pre- 
tended messages of importance for the tsar, 
and enters upon open warfare with Bennigsen 
and the grand-duke. 

At last, against the will of Bagration, the 
union of the two armies is effected, at Smo- 
lensk. 

Bagration drives to Barclay's headquarters. 
The commander-in-chief emerges from the 
house and salutes his visitor as a superior in 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



13 



rank. Overcome by this display of magnanim- 
ity, Bagration places himself under Barclay's 
command, while remaining in spirit opposed to 
the ideas of his chief. In the reports addressed 
to Araktshi'ef at the express order of the tsar, 
he said : — 

f"^ '* The will of the emperor be done, but I cannot stay 
with the ministre (Barclay). . . . For the love of God, send 
me where you will, give me only a single regiment to com- 
mand, but do not leave me here, for I cannot stay. . . . The 
quarters are full of Germans, and it is not possible for a 
Russian to breathe here . . . the most idiotic things take 
place. . . , When I believe that I am serving the tsar and 
my country, I am really serving Barclay. ... I confess that 
this does not suit me." 

The intrigues of Branitzki, of Wintzengerod, 
and other superior officers embitters still further 
the relations of the two chiefs, and united ac- 
tion is more and more impossible. 

When the Russians are finally ready to at- 
tack the French at Smolensk, the commander- 
in-chief sends a general to inspect the lines. 
This general, hating Barclay, instead of obey- 
ing orders, goes to one of his friends, a corps 
commander, remains with him all day, and 
returns at night to Barclay, to disapprove of 



14 



NAPOLEON'S 



a plan of battle which he has not even ex- 
amined. 

Amid these quarrels and intrigues, we are 
trying to meet the French, although ignorant 
of their whereabouts. The French encounter 
Neverovski's division, and approach the walls 
of Smolensk. It is impossible not to give 
battle at Smolensk. We must maintain our 
communications. The battle takes place, and 
thousands of men on both sides are killed. 

Contrary to the wishes of the tsar and the 
people, our generals abandon Smolensk. The 
inhabitants of Smolensk, betrayed by their 
governor, set fire to the city, and, with this 
example to other Russian towns, they take 
refuge in Moscow, deploring their losses and 
sowing on every side the seeds of hate against 
the enemy. 

Napoleon advances and we retreat, and the 
result is that we take exactly the measures 
necessary to conquer the French. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 15 



II. 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BATTLE OF BORODINO. 

For what reason and in what manner was 
the battle of Borodino fought ? It had no 
meaning either for the Russians or the 
French. The immediate result of the battle 
was for the Russians what they most dreaded, 
a retreat to Moscow ; and for the French what 
they feared more than anything else, the en- 
tire destruction of their army. Now, although 
this result was ^ the only one possible, and 
might have been clearly foreseen. Napoleon 
offered battle, and Koutouzof accepted the 
challenge. 

If he had been a commander governed by 
reasonable motives. Napoleon would have seen 
clearly that at twelve hundred miles from his 
own country he could not engage in a battle 
involving the possible loss of a fourth of his 
army without marching to certain destruction. 
In like manner Koutouzof might have seen 

15 



' 1 5 NAPOLEON'S 

clearly that a battle which exposed him to a 
loss of a fourth of his army would result at 
the same time in the loss of Moscow. 

This is mathematically as evident as it 
would be in a game of draughts where, if 
I have one man less than my adversary, and 
by exchanging would certainly lose, I ought not 
to exchange. 

When my adversary has sixteen men and 
I have only fourteen, I am only an eighth 
weaker than he ; but when I shall have ex- 
changed thirteen men, he will be three times 
stronger than I. 

Up to the time of the battle of Borodino 
the Russian forces were to the French forces 
in the proportion of five to six ; after the 
battle the proportion was only one to two. 
That is to say, before the battle the proportion 
was 100:120, and after the battle, 50:100. 
And yet Koutouzof, that intelligent and ex- 
perienced general, accepted battle. 
^~ Napoleon, man of genius as he is called, 
fought this battle, which destroyed a fourth of 
his army and obliged him to continue his ad- 
vance. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ly 

The objection may perhaps be made that 
Napoleon expected to end the campaign by the 
occupation of Moscow, as he had ended another 
campaign by the occupation of Vienna ; but 
we have sufficient evidence for thinking that 
such was not his idea. The historians most 
favorable to Napoleon assert that he wished 
to end his advance at Smolensk, because of 
the danger of extending his lines, and because 
he knew very well that the capture of Moscow 
would not end the campaign. He had seen at 
Smolensk how the Russians got their towns 
ready for him, and when he offered parley he 
met with no response. 

Napoleon, in offering battle at Borodino, and 
Koutouzof, in accepting battle, acted each en- 
tirely contrary to the dictates of common- 
sense.- But now come the historians, and, to 
justify accomplished facts, they have brought 
together an ingenious tissue of foresight and 
genius on the part of the commanders, whereas, 
in truth, these commanders were the most pas- 
sive and involuntary instruments of all the in- 
voluntary instruments that ever served in the 
execution of great historical events. 



1 3 NAPOLEON'S 

The ancients have left us a number of his- 
torical poems, in which the interest is concen- 
trated upon a few heroic figures, and we do. not 
yet readily see that, in our more human times, 
this manner of regarding history is wholly with- 
out reason. 

The second question is, How was the battle 
of Borodino and that of Shevardino, which pre- 
ceded it, fought ? The reply of the historians 
is not less positive, as every one knows. They 
all agree in telling us that : — 

" The Russian army, in its so-called retreat 
from Smolensk, songJit the most favorable position 
for a general battle, and found it at Borodino. 

" The Rtissians had beforehand fortified this 
position on the left of tJie road, almost in a right 
a7igle from Borodino to Oicstitsa, the point, in 
fact, where the battle took place. 

" To keep zvatcJi of the enemy, they estab- 
lished in front a fortified redoubt icpon the hills 
of Shevardino. On the ^th of September, 
Napoleon attacked the redoubt, and took it by 
assault; September /, he attacked the entire 
Russian army, which was then in position on 
the fields of Borodino'' 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. I9 

Such is the story of all the historians, and it 
is absolutely false, as those who examine the 
matter may readily see. 

The Russians did not look for the most 
favorable position. On the contrary, they 
passed, during their retreat, several positions 
far superior to that of Borodino. They did not 
pause at any of these positions, for various 
reasons. Koutouzof would accept only a place 
that was of his own choosing ; the necessity of 
a general battle had not yet made itself clearly 
felt ; finally, Miloradovitch had not yet arrived 
with reenforcements; — and there were other 
reasons, that cannot be enumerated here. 
From these considerations it appears that the 
first positions of the Russian army were 
stronger than the position at Borodino, and 
that this position was not only unfavorable in 
itself, but that, by sticking a pin anywhere at 
hap-hazard into the map of Russia, a better 
place might have been found. 

Moreover, the Russians had not fortified the 
position on the left of Borodino at a right 
angle with the road ; up to September 6, 181 2, 
they never imagined that the battle would oc- 



20 NAPOLEON'S 

cur at this point. To prove this, I maintain, 
in the first place, that on September 6 there 
was no fortification, for the work of entrench- 
ing began on that day, and was not ended till 
September 7 ; and, in the second place, I will 
describe the position of the Shevardino re- 
doubt — for to put this redoubt in front of the 
position where the battle was fought is sim- 
ply nonsensical. Why was this redoubt more 
strongly fortified than all the other defensive 
points .-* Why did the Russian army exhaust 
itself and sacrifice six thousand men in futile 
efforts to hold this redoubt as late as the night 
of September 5 ? A Cossack patrol amply suf- 
ficed to keep watch of the enemy. 

To demonstrate that the battle was not 
fought at a point anticipated by the Russian 
army, and that the redoubt at Shevardino was 
not an advance post of this position, I have a 
third proof, still more conclusive than the 
others. Up to September 6, Barclay de Tolly 
and Bagration believed that the Shevardino 
redoubt was on the left flank of their position, 
and Koutouzof himself, while the impressions 
of the combat were still fresh in his mind, wrote 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 2 1 

a report in which he spoke of the Shevardino 
redoubt as on the left flank. 

It is evident that later on, when there was 
time for reflection, they got up a story to 
smooth over the mistakes of the commander-in- 
chief, who would be nothing less than infallible. 
They said that the Shevardino redoubt was an 
advance post, whereas in reality it was only a 
fortification on the left flank, and they main- 
tained that the battle of Borodino had occurred 
at a position which they had chosen and forti- 
fied beforehand. The truth is that the battle 
took place where it was least expected to occur 
and at a point that was not fortified at all. 
The real state of things was as follows : — 
A position was chosen upon the Kolotsha 
river, which crosses the highway, not at a right 
angle, but at an acute angle, and consequently 
the left flank rested on Shevardino, the right 
flank was near the village of Novoe, while the 
centre was at Borodino, at the confluence of 
the two rivers Kolotsha and VoTna. This posi- 
tion, covered by the Kolotsha river, was held 
by an army which sought to check the enemy 
in his march upon Moscow by the road from 



22 NAPOLEON'S 

Smolensk. Whoever will look over the field of 
Borodino, putting out of his mind the stories 
that have been told about the battle, will cer- 
tainly come to this conclusion. 

Napoleon, on September 5, was moving 
towards Valouevo ; he had not discovered, the 
historians gravely tell us, a position of the 
Russians from Oustitsa to Borodino — for the 
very good reason that they were not there. 
Neither did he see the advance post of the 
Russian army, but, pursuing the Russian rear- 
guard, he hurled himself upon the Shevardino 
redoubt on the left flank of the Russians and 
took them by surprise by passing with his 
troops across the Kolotsha. The Russians, 
not having succeeded in bringing about a 
general engagement, drew back their left wing, 
abandoning the position which they had in- 
tended to occupy, and taking another, of which 
they had not thought, and which was wholly 
without fortifications. 

When Napoleon had crossed from the left 
bank of the Kolotsha, he transposed the centre 
of hostilities from right to left with reference 
to the Russian army, and brought it into the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN-. 



23 



tract of country between Oustitsa, Semenovskoe, 
and Borodino. This place, as we have said, 
had no advantage over any other for the Rus- 
sians, but liere it was that the battle of Sep- 
tember 7 was fought. 

The subjoined rough sketch shows the plan 
of the supposed battle, and that of the battle 
which actually took place. 

If on the night of September 5 Napoleon had 
not moved in the direction of the Kolotsha, and, 
instead of giving the order to attack the redoubt 
immediately, had reserved his attack until the 
next morning, no one would have doubted that 
Shevardino was on the left flank of the Russian 
position, and the battle would have taken place 
as the Russians expected. In that case, the 
Russians would have defended the redoubt still 
more stubbornly in order to protect their left 
flank ; they would have attacked Napoleon in 
the centre or on the right ; and on September 
5 the battle would have occurred in the posi- 
tion they had chosen and fortified. But as the 
attack upon the left flank of the Russian army 
took place at night, following the retreat of the 
rear-guard, and immediately after the battle of 



24 NAPOLEON'S 

Gridnevo, and as the Russians would not or 
could not begin a general engagement on Sep- 
tember 5, — the first and the most important 
action in the battle of Borodino was lost on the 
5th of September, and this led inevitably to 
the loss of the battle fought on September 7. 

When the French had carried the Shevardino 
redoubt, the Russians were without protection 
on the left flank, and were obliged to withdraw 
their left wing and fortify themselves as chance 
and urgency demanded. 

Thus on September 7 the Russian troops 
were not only provided with weak and incom- 
plete entrenchments, but the disadvantages of 
their position were increased by the refusal 
of their commanders to recognize the facts. 
They refused to admit that their position on 
the left flank was lost, and that the battle- 
ground had been transferred from right to 
left. So the Russian army, refusing to mod- 
ify its extended position reaching from the 
village of Novoe to Oustitsa, was obliged dur- 
ing the engagement to transfer troops from 
right to left. Consequently, the Russians con- 
fronted the French army, which was directed 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



27 



upon their left flank, with a force twice infe- 
rior to that of the enemy. 

Poniatovski's movements against Oustitsa 
and Ouvarovo, on the right flank of the French, 
were independent incidents in the progress 
of the battle. 

Thus the battle of Borodino did not take 
place in conformity with the assertions of his- 
torians, who wish to conceal the mistakes of 
our chiefs, and who in this way detract from 
the glory which belongs to the Russian army 
and the Russian people. The battle of Boro- 
dino did not occur at a place chosen and 
fortified beforehand, neither were the Rus- 
sian forces nearly equal to those of the 
French. The fact is that by the loss of the 
Shevardino redoubt the Russians were brought 
face to face in an unfortified position with an 
enemy outnurnbering them two to one. Under 
these conditions it was impossible for them 
to hold their own for ten consecutive hours, 
impossible even to save the arrhy from com- 
plete defeat after a three-hours engagement. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 29 



III. 

napoleon's preparations for the battle of 
borodino. 

According to the historians, Napoleon 
passed the entire day of September 6 on 
horseback, inspecting the battle-field, exam- 
ining the plans offered by his marshals, and 
dictating orders to his staff. 

The Russian lines had been modified, and 
the capture of the Shevardino redoubt had 
forced a retreat of the left flank. This posi- 
tion was not fortified, or protected by the 
river, and before it extended a naked, level 
plain. 

It is evident to any one, whether military 
or not, that this weak spot is where the 
French ought to make their attack. To 
reach this conclusion there was no need of 
so many combinations and preparations on 
the part of the emperor and his marshals. 
That high and extraordinary capacity which 



30 NAPOLEON'S 

we call genius, and which is so commonly 
attributed to Napoleon, was on this occasion 
entirely superfluous. And yet the historians 
who have described these events, the men 
who surrounded Napoleon, and Napoleon him- 
self, thought differently. 

Napoleon, they tell us, rode over the ground 
which he had chosen for a battle, examined 
the country, profoundly absorbed in his re- 
flections, moving his head in sign of approval 
or disapproval, as if in answer to his own 
thoughts, and without deigning to reveal to 
the generals about him the profound ideas 
that influenced his decisions. To them he 
gave only definite results in the form of 
orders. Davoust, otherwise called the Duke 
of Eckmiihl, proposed to turn the right flank 
of the Russians ; Napoleon rejected this prop- 
osition without saying why he did so. To 
the suggestion of General Campan, who was 
to attack Bagration's outworks, and who of- 
fered to lead his division through the woods. 
Napoleon gave his consent, although Ney, 
the so-called Duke of Elchingen, observed 
that the march through the woods would be 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ^j 

dangerous, and would throw the division into 
disorder. 

Napoleon, after examining the country in 
front of the Shevardino redoubt, remained for 
some time in meditation ; then he ordered 
the placing of two batteries, for the bom- 
bardment of the Russian fortifications on the 
following day, and he selected positions for 
the field-artillery. 

After giving his orders, he retired to his 
tent, and drew up in writing the plan of 
battle. 

Here is the plan of which French historians 
speak with transports of praise, and which the 
historians of other nations treat with respect : 

"order of battle. 

^^ At the camp, two leagues in the rear of Mozhaisk. 
''^September 6, 1812. 

" At daybreak the two new batteries constructed during the 
night on the plateau by the Prince of Eckmiihl will open fire 
upon the two batteries of the enemy opposite. 

" At the same moment, General Pernety, commanding the 
First Corps of Artillery, with thirty cannon from Campan's Di- 
vision, and all the howitzers of Dessaix' and Friant's Divisions 
placed in advance, will begin shelling the enemy's battery, 
which, by this means, will have against it : — 



32 



NAPOLEON'S 

" 24 pieces of guard, 

" 30 from Campan's Division, and 

" 8 from Friant's and Dessaix' Divisions. 

" Total : 62 cannon. 

*' General Fouche, commanding the Third Corps of Artillery, 
will place himself with all the howitzers of the Third and 
Eighth Corps, which are sixteen in number, around the bat- 
tery attacking the left redoubt, giving this battery a force of 
40 pieces. 

" General Sorbier will stand ready, at the word of command, 
with all the howitzers of the guard, to repair to one or the 
other redoubt. 

"During the cannonade. Prince Poniatovski will move from 
the village towards the woods, and turn the position of the 
enemy. 

" General Campan will move along the edge of the woods, 
to carry the first redoubt. 

" The battle thus begun, orders will be given according to 
the disposition of the enemy. 

*' The cannonade on the left will begin at the moment when 
that on the right is heard. A heavy infantry fire will be begun 
by Morand's Division, and by the Divisions of the Viceroy, as 
soon as they see that the attack on the right has commenced. 

" The Viceroy will take possession of the village,^ and de- 
bouch by the three bridges to the heights, while Generals Mo- 
rand and Gerard will deploy under the orders of the Viceroy 
to seize the enemy's redoubt and form the line of battle. 

" All this must be done with order and method, taking care 
always to exercise the greatest caution." 

This order, not very clear in its style, will 
appear very confusing to any one so far de- 

1 Borodino. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



33 



ficient in religious veneration for the genius 
of Napoleon as to dare to analyze its meaning. 
It contains four commands, of which not one 
was executed, because it was impossible to 
carry them out. 

The first command was as follows : — 

" The batteries established at the points chosen by Napoleoit, with 
the cannon of Fernety and Fouche, will place the7nselves in line, 
one htmdred and two pieces in all, and, opening fire, will devastate 
the Ricssian outworks and redoubts.^'' 

This command could not be followed, be- 
cause from the place chosen by Napoleon the 
shots would not have reached the Russian en- 
trenchments, and these one hundred and two 
cannon would have thundered in vain until 
the nearest commander had ordered them to 
the front, contrary to Napoleon's decree. 

Here is the second command : — 

" Foniatovski will 77iove from the village towards the woods, 
and turn the left wing of the Fussians." 

This command could not be executed, be- 
cause Poniatovski, on moving towards the 
woods, found Toutchkof barring the way, and 
he could not turn the position of the Rus- 
sians. 



34 NAPOLEON'S 

The third command is that 

'' General Canipan will move along the edge of the woods and 
carry the first redoubt ^ 

General Campan's Division did not take the 
first redoubt, because it was repulsed ; on 
emerging from the woods, it was obliged to 
close up under the Russian fire, something 
that Napoleon had not foreseen. 

The fourth command is this: — 

" The Viceroy will take possessiojt of the village [Borodino], and 
will debotcch by its three bridges upon the heights^ while Generals 
Morand and Geraf'd [who are not to]d either where or when 
they ought to go] will deploy under the orders of the Viceroy to 
seize the enemy^s redoubt andfo7'ni the line of battle." 

As far as it is possible to understand this 
(relying more upon the efforts of the Viceroy 
to carry out the orders he received than upon 
the vague phraseology in which they were 
given), it seems that he was told to move from 
"Borodino upon the redoubt at the left, and 
that Morand's and Gerard's Divisions were at 
the same time to advance the front. 

This command, like all the rest, was not 
carried out^ because it was wholly impracti- 
cable: 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 35 

When he had got beyond Borodino, the 
Viceroy was forced back upon the Kolotsha, 
and found it impossible to advance. Morand's 
and Gerard's Divisions did not take any re- 
doubts, because they were repulsed. The re- 
doubt was carried by the cavalry at the close 
of the battle, by a possibility that Napoleon 
had not foreseen. We see, therefore, that not 
one of the commands in this order was per- 
formed. 

The order further asserted that during the 
battle instructions would be given in accord- 
ance with the movements of the enemy. 
From this we might infer that Napoleon, 
during the battle, made all the suggestions 
that were necessary. He did nothing of the 
sort. vThe facts do not fail to show that he 
was so far away from the field of action that 
the progress of the battle was not even 
known to him.' 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 



37 



IV. 



HOW FAR NAPOLEON S WILL INFLUENCED THE 
BATTLE OF BORODINO. 

Several historians assure us that the victory 
of the French at Borodino was modified by the 
fact that Napoleon was suffering from the ef- 
fects of a cold in the head. If it had not been 
for this cold, his arrangements before and dur- 
ing the battle would have displayed still more 
genius, Russia would have been conquered, and 
the face of the zvorld would have bee7t changed. 

Historians who believe that Russia was 
formed at the will of one man, Peter the 
Great ; who believe that France changed from 
a republic to an empire and sent armies to 
Russia at the will of one man. Napoleon, 
naturally think that Russia retained some ves- 
tige of power after the battle of ^ Borodino be- 
cause Napoleon had a cold in his head on Sep- 
tember 7 ; — and they are logically consistent 
in thinking so. 



38 NAPOLEON'S 

Plainly, if it depended on the will of Napo- 
leon to give or not to give battle at Borodino, 
to make or not to make such and such disposi- 
tions of his forces, it is evident that the cold in 
his head, which influenced the manifestation of 
his will, must have been of great service to the 
Russian cause, and that the valet who, on Sep- 
tember 5, 1812, forgot to provide Napoleon 
with waterproof boots was the real savior of 
Russia. When we have once started on this 
line of reasoning, the conclusion is inevitable ; 
as much so as that reached by the ironical Vol- 
taire when he demonstrated that the Massacre 
of Saint Bartholomew was due to the fact that 
Charles IX. suffered from indigestion. 
,- But to those who do not believe that Russia 
was formed at the will of Peter the Great, that 
the French empire arose at the bidding of a 
single man, or that the campaign in Russia 
was undertaken at the sole behest of Napoleon, 
such reasoning will appear to be not only un- 
reasonable and false, but contrary to the na- 
ture of human activity. To them the response 
to the question, What is the cause of historical 
events } is something very different. .They be- 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 3Q 

lieve that the progress of events is inevitable ; 
that it is a result of the combined volition of 
all who participate in the events, and that the 
influence of Napoleons upon the progress of 
affairs is superficial and fictitious. .^ 

It is paradoxical to assert that the Massa- 
cre of Saint Bartholomew was the work of 
Charles IX. because he gave the order to kill, 
and believed that the killing was done at his 
command. Not less paradoxical is it to affirm 
that the battle of Borodino, which cost the 
lives of eighty thousand men, was the work of 
Napoleon because he planned the engagement, 
and gave the order to begin the attack. A 
sentiment of human dignity, which tells me 
that each of us, if he be not more of a man 
than Napoleon the Great, is at least not less 
than he, directs me to a solution of the prob- 
lem justified by a multitude of facts. 

At the battle of Borodino, Napoleon did not 
attack anybody or kill anybody. That duty 
was performed by his soldiers. He did not 
do any killing himself. The soldiers of the 
French army, in going to the battle of Boro- 
dino to kill Russian soldiers, were obeying. 



40 



NAPOLEON'S 



not Napoleon's orders, but their own impulses. 
>^The whole army of French, Italians, Germans, 
Poles, famished and in rags, worn out by the 
campaign, felt, at sight of the Russian army 
barring the road to Moscow, that the wine was 
uncorked, and they had only to rush in and 
drink. If at this moment Napoleon had for- 
bidden them to fight the Russians, they would 
have killed him and given battle ; for to them a 
battle was necessary. When they heard the 
proclamations of Napoleon which, in exchange 
for wounds and death, offered them as a conso- 
lation the homage of posterity, and proclaimed 
as heroes those who should fight through the 
Muscovite campaign, they cried, "Vive TEm- 
pereur ! " — as they cried " Vive I'Empereur ! " 
at sight of the child holding the terrestrial 
globe at the end of a bilboquet stick ; and they 
would have responded with the same vivat to 
any nonsense proffered to them. There was 
nothing better for them to do than to cry 
"Vive I'Empereur ! " and fight in order to reach 
Moscow, food, repose, and victory, ut was not 
at Napoleon's order that they undertook to kill 
their f ellow-menA 



R USSIAN CA MP A IGN. a j 

The progress of the battle was not directed 
by Napoleon, for no part of his plan was carried 
out ; and during the engagement he did not 
know what was going on before his eyes. 

Hence the manner in which these men un- 
dertook to kill one another was independent of 
Napoleon and not influenced by the action of 
his will, because it was determined by the will 
of the thousands of men who took part in the 
combat. BiU it s-eemed to Napoleon as if his 
will was the main-spring of action. 

Thus we see that the question, " Did or did 
not Napoleon have a cold in his head ? " is of 
no more importance to the historian than a 
cold in the head of the last stragglers from the 
ranks. 

The fact that Napoleon was afflicted with a 
cold in the head on September 7 is still more 
insignificant because it is easy to prove the 
falsity of the assertions made by writers that by 
reason of this cold in the head Napoleon's 
dispositions and orders concerning the battle 
were less adroit than those he was accustomed 
to make. 

The plan, which we have already given, is 



42 



NAPOLEON'S 



not at all inferior — it is even superior — to 
plans that in his preceding campaigns led him 
to victory. The fictitious combinations pre- 
pared for this battle were not in the least in- 
ferior to those of previous battles ; they were, 
in fact, of absolutely equivalent value. But the 
dispositions and the combinations seem less 
fortunate, because the battle of Borodino was 
the first battle that Napoleon did not wiri?\ The 
best plan and the most sagacious combinations 
in the world seem very poor when they do not 
end in victory, and the veriest tyro in military 
matters does not hesitate to criticise them. 
On the other hand, the feeblest plans and com- 
binations appear to be excellent when they are 
crowned with success, and learned men devote 
entire volumes to the demonstration of their 
superiority. 

The plan proposed by Weirother for the bat- 
tle of Austerlitz was a model of its kind, but it 
was condemned because its very perfection in- 
volved a superabundance of details. 

Napoleon at the battle of Borodino played his 
sovereign part as well as in other battles — 
even better. He did nothing that could stand 



RUSSIAN- CAMPAIGN. 



43 



in the way of success ; he accepted the most 
reasonable advice ; he did not confuse his 
orders, he did not contradict himself, he was 
exempt from weakness, he did not abandon the 
field of battle, — with all his tact and his great 
experience in war, he assumed with calmness 
and dignity the part of a fictitious commander. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ^e 



V. 

THE RETREAT TO FILY. 

,.--~The united forces of twenty European na- 
tions have entered Russia. The Russian army 
and the people recoil before the enemy as far 
as Smolensk, and from Smolensk to Borodino. 
The French army, with continually increasing 
velocity, advances upon Moscow, its chosen des- 
tination. 

As it approaches this point, its progress be- 
comes more rapid, just as the velocity of a 
falling body increases as it draws near the 
earth. The French army has behind it thou- 
sands of miles of devastated country ; before it, 
only a few miles off, the goal of all its efforts. 
Every soldier in Napoleon's army knows that he 
is nearing the end, and the army moves forward 
propelled by the force of its own momentum. 

In the Russian army, a spirit of fury arises 
against the enemy, and this spirit becomes more 
and more iniiamed by retreat. 



46 NAPOLEON'S 

At Borodino the two armies meet. 

Neither one nor the other is dispersed, but 
immediately after the collision the Russian army 
recoils, as surely as a cannon-ball recoils when 
struck by another in full flight. At the same 
time the invading body moves, no less surely, a 
certain distance forward, although the impelling 
force has been diminished by the shock. 

The Russians retire to a point about fifty 
miles from Moscow, while the French enter 
the city and come to a standstill. 

During the five weeks that follow, no battle 
is fought. The French give no signs of life. 

Like an animal mortally wounded, licking 
the blood that issues from its wounds, the 
French remain for five weeks at Moscow doing 
nothing. Then suddenly, with no apparent 
reason, they fly backward, take the road to 
Kalouga, and, although the field of Malo-Yaro- 
slavetz is theirs, they retreat still more rapidly 
to Smolensk, without fighting any important 
battle, and from Smolensk retire to Vilna, 
from Vilna to the Beresina, and so on, going 
always further away. 

On the night of September 7, Koutouzof and 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. aj 

the Russian army believe that they have won 
the battle. Koutouzof even makes a report to 
that effect to the Tsar Alexander I. 

Koutouzof had given an order to prepare for 
another battle to finish with the enemy, not at 
all with the intention of giving an erroneous 
impression, but because he knew that the 
enemy had been beaten. The fact was that 
both sides were beaten in this battle. 

But when, that night and all the next day, 
news comes in of the terrible losses sustained 
by the army, which is reduced to one-half of its 
former strength, it becomes clear that another 
battle is physically impossible. 

How can they undertake another battle with- 
out informing themselves of their condition, 
with the wounded uncared for, the dead un- 
counted, their instruments of warfare destroyed, 
their dead generals not replaced, and their men 
unrefreshed by food and sleep } 

Meanwhile, the French army, after the battle, 
with a centrifugal force seemingly augmented 
inversely by the square of the distance, has 
heaped itself upon the Russian ranks. 

Koutouzof wanted to renew the attack on the 



48 NAPOLEON'S 

morrow, and his army was with him in this 
desire. But it is not enough to desire a thing 
to do it. Desire alone will not justify an attack ; 
it must also be possible, and in this case possi- 
bility was lacking. 

There was no way to prevent first one days 
inarch in retreat, then a second, then a third, 
and when, on September 13, the army was 
before Moscow, although the troops had re- 
gained their courage, circumstances obliged 
them to retire behind the city. They made 
this retrogade movement and abandoned Mos- 
cow to the enemy. 

xj^o those who imagine that generals plan their 
campaign and battles as we, seated tranquilly 
in our libraries with a map spread before us, 
make up combinations and ask ourselves what 
measures ought to be taken in such and such a 
war, to such persons I propound this question : 
Why did not Koutouzof, in beating a retreat, find 
some position before reaching Fily 1 — why did 
he not follow the road to Kalouga, leaving 
Moscow to take care of itself .^ Other similar 
questions suggest themselves. 

Now, the fact is that the persons of whom we 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ^g 

have been speaking take no account of the in- 
evitable conditions in which a commander-in- 
chief must act. His situation is not at all 
what we imagine it to be when we picture him 
comfortably seated in his study, planning, with 
the aid of a map, a campaign against a given 
number of the enemy, moving in a determined 
direction and during a definite period of time. 

When action begins, the general-in-chief is 
never surrounded by conditions such as we 
have at command when we examine the event 
seated tranquilly at our library tables.. The 
commander-in-chief is always at the centre of a 
series of events so complex and so hurried that 
it is not possible for a single instant to compre- 
hend the importance of what is going on. The 
result is invisible, details are unfolded from 
hour to hour, and during all the changes of 
their continuous progress the commander-in- 
chief is at the centre of a complicated game of 
perplexities, responsibilities, projects and coun- 
sels, subject to all manner of danger and deceit, 
and obliged to reply to innumerable and contra- 
dictory questions. 

Military critics assert in the most serious 



50 



NAPOLEON'S 



manner that Koutouzof might have led his troops 
in the direction of Kalouga before retreating to 
Fily, and they even say that such a course was 
suggested to him. They forget that at a deci- 
sive moment a commander-in-chief has not only 
one proposal but a dozen proposals to examine. 
All plans based upon strategy and tactics are 
mutually contradictory. Theoretically, it is the 
office of the commander-in-chief to select some 
one of the plans that are suggested, but he has 
not the leisure to compare and decide between 
them. Events will not wait for him.- 
^Suppose that on September lo the proposal 
is made to Koutouzof to take the route to 
Kalouga, but that at the same moment an ad- 
jutant from Miloradovitch comes up at a gallop 
and asks whether they shall begin an attack 
upon the French or retreat. This question 
must be answered at once, and the suggestion 
turns Koutouzofs attention from the plans of 
retreating by Kalouga. 

.y But following the adjutant comes the com- 
missary to ask whither the stores are to be 
transported ; then the chief of ambulance 
wishes to know what is to be done with the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. t\ 

wounded ; and finally arrives a courier from St. 
Petersburg bearing a message from the tsar 
declaring the abandonment of Moscow to be 
impossible. 

^ Meanwhile, a rival of the commander-in-chief 
— and there is always at least one ready to sap 
his authority — presents a new plan, directly 
opposed to that favoring retreat by the road to 
Kalouga. The commander-in-chief is thor- 
oughly exhausted and must at any cost have 
rest and sleep. This consideration does not 
prevent the general who has not been decorated 
from making a complaint ; the people of the 
country implore protection ; an officer who has 
been sent out to reconnoitre returns with the 
report directly contrary to that of the officer 
who preceded him, a spy (poor captive) has 
still another version, the general who has made 
the reconnaissance a third, — all describe differ- 
ently the position of the enemy. 

Those who do not take into account the in- 
evitable conditions controlling the actions of 
the commander-in-chief show us, for example, 
the situation of the army at Fily, and start with 
the idea that the general commanding had till 



52 NAPOLEON'S 

September 13 to debate the question whether 
or not to abandon the defence of Moscow, 
whereas with the Russian army within five 
versts of Moscow this question could not even 
arise. 

At what point, then, was this question 
solved ? 

It was solved at Drissa, at Smolensk, still 
more plainly on September 5 at Shevardino, at 
Borodino on the 7th, and every day, every hour, 
and every minute of the retreat from Borodino 
to Fily. 



RUSSIAN. CAMPAIGN. 



53 



VI. 

MOSCOW ABANDONED BY ITS INHABITANTS. 

The abandonment of Moscow and the 
destruction of that city by fire were as inevi- 
table as was the retreat of the army to the rear 
of Moscow, after the battle of Borodino, with- 
out any other conflict with the enemy. 
^All Russia could have predicted the course 
of events, not by the aid of logical reasoning, 
but by the light of patriotic sentiment, which 
burns in the heart of every Russian, and in- 
spired all who took part in this historical drama. 

What occurred at Moscow had occurred 
spontaneously after Smolensk in every town 
and village of the invaded territory, and this 
without the need of Count Rostoptchin's procla- 
mations. The people waited calmly for the 
enemy. They were not agitated, they did not 
revolt, they did not tear anybody in pieces ; 
they simply waited calmly for what was to 
happen, knowing that at the critical moment 



54 



NAPOLEON'S 



their course of action would be plain. As the 
enemy approached, the wealthier portion of 
the population fled, leaving their property ; and 
the poor remained to burn and destroy what 
was left behind. 

aA consciousness that things cannot be differ- 
ent from what they really are has always been 
a trait of Russian character, and it still exists.^/ 
A consciousness — more, a presentiment — that 
Moscow would be taken by the enemy was mani- 
fest in Muscovite society in I8I2^i 

Those who forsook the ancient capital of 
Russia from the month of July to the begin- 
ning of August proved that they saw what was 
to follow. 

^,Jhose who went away, carrying what they 
could with them and leaving their houses and 
a great part of their goods, were acting under 
the influence of that *' latent " patriotism which 
does not manifest itself in phrases, or in the 
sacrifice of children for the safety of the 
country, or by any other similar and unnatural 
actions, but which is generated imperceptibly, 
simply, organically, and for that reason leads to 
the most significant results. 



R USSIAN . CA MP A IGN. 5 5 

On every side the cry went up, " It is cow- 
ardly to fly from danger ; only cowards will 
abandon Moscow ! " 

Rostoptchin declared in his proclamations 
that the abandonment of Moscow would be a 
disgrace. 

Those who went away were ashamed to hear 
themselves spoken of as cowards ; they were 
ashamed to go, and yet they went, feeling that 
at the time there was nothing else to be done. 
,, Why did they take to flight ? We cannot 
believe that they were frightened by Rostop- 
tchin's stories of atrocities committed by 
Napoleon in the towns conquered by him. 
The people who gave the signal for flight were 
rich and cultivated. They knew that Vienna 
and Berlin had remained intact during the 
French occupation, and that the inhabitants of 
those cities passed the time gayly with the 
adorable Frenchmen, whom, at the period in 
question, Russians, and especially Russian 
ladies, greatly loved. 

Moscow was abandoned because the Rus- 
sians did not ask themselves whether they 
would be comfortable or not under French 



56 NAPOLEON'S 

domination. They had no doubts whatever 
about the matter. The greatest of all evils 
was to remain under an enemy's rule. -^ 
^^efore Borodino they went away, and after 
that battle they went still more rapidly, deaf 
to the appeals of Rostoptchin, who begged 
them to remain and defend the city ; deaf to 
his plea that they should go out to fight the 
French, led by the shrine of the Holy Mother 
of Yver ; caring nothing for the balloons which 
were to destroy Napoleon, or for any of the 
nonsense with which Rostoptchin's proclama- 
tions were filled. 

--Those who took to flight knew that the army 
would do its duty, and that, if it were not 
victorious, they, with their daughters and their 
valets, would not be able to fight Napoleon ; 
and so there was nothing for them to do but to 
depart, in spite of their regrets at the loss of 
their property. 

^-^They went away without thinking what a 
grand spectacle it would be, this great and rich 
capital abandoned by its inhabitants and deliv- 
ered over to the flames, for a great city built of 
wood, and deserted, is fatally certain to be 



RUSSIAN' CAMPAIGN. ty 

burned. They went away, each by himself, 
and yet to them is due the great event which 
will always be the greatest glory of the Russian 
people. 

That great Russian lady who in the month 
of June fled from Moscow to Saratof, with her 
troop of negrillons and comedians, feeling 
vaguely that she would not serve Bonaparte, 
and fearing that she would be arrested on the 
road by order of Rostoptchin, accomplished 
simply and in all sincerity the work which was 
the salvation of Russia. 

As for Count Rostoptchin, now he cried 
shame upon all who deserted Moscow, and 
then himself ordered the evacuation of the 
government offices ; now he gave useless arms 
to a mob of drunkards ; now he displayed the 
sacred images in the streets, and then forbade 
the Archbishop Augustin to take away the 
holy relics ; now he seized all private con- 
veyances ; now he brought on one hundred 
and thirty-six carts the balloon^ prepared by 
Lepic ; now he made known his intention 
to burn Moscow ; now he declared that he 
set fire to his residence with his own hands 



58 



NAPOLEON'S 



and at the same time sent a proclamation to 
the French solemnly reproaching Napoleon for 
having destroyed the Foundling Asylum ; now 
he took credit for the burning of Moscow, 
and then denied it ; now he commanded that 
all spies should be seized and brought to him ; 
now he left Madame Oberchalemet, the head 
of the French society of the town, in peace, 
and then gave orders for the expulsion of the 
aged and respectable director of posts, Klout- 
sharef ; now he convoked the people at the 
Three Hills to fight the French, and then, 
to rid himself of these people, he delivered to 
them the unhappy Veretshagin for slaughter, 
and escaped himself by one of the rear gates ; 
now he declared that he should not survive 
the disasters of Moscow ; now he wrote in 
albums, to celebrate his conduct, French verses 
like these : — 

" Je suis ne tartare, 

Je voulais etre romain ; 
Les fran9ais m'appeleront barbare, 

Les russes Georges Dandin." 

i^ This man had no comprehension whatever 
of what was going on ; he wished only to do 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ^q 

something, to astonish somebody, to perform 
some act of patriotic heroism, and like a child, 
playing with that great and fatal event, the 
abandonment and burning of Moscow, he 
sought with his feeble hand now to force 
along, now to restrain, the vast wave of popu- 
lar action which bore him onward. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 6i 



VIL 

THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. 

The burning of Moscow is by the French 
attributed to the ferocious patriotism of Ros- 
toptchin ; by the Russians, to the savagery of 
the French. But the fact is, the burning of 
Moscow cannot be attributed to any one per- 
son or any number of persons who could be 
named. 

Moscow burned because the city was in a 
condition when a city of wood must necessarily 
burn, even if we do not take into account the 
one hundred and thirty fire-engines, which were 
of little service or of no service at all. Mos- 
cow, in the absence of its inhabitants, was 
doomed to the flames ; the conflagration was 
inevitable, just as a heap of shavings upon 
which sparks are dropped must sooner or later 
take fire. 

A wooden city which had its fires every day 
in spite of the police who watched, and the 



62 NAPOLEON'S 

proprietors who looked after their houses, 
could not escape destruction when the inhabi- 
tants-were replaced by troops of soldiers, who 
smoked their pipes, made piles of senators' 
chairs for firewood in the senate assembling- 
place, and there, twice a day, cooked their meals. 

Even in times of peace, when troops take up 
their quarters in villages, the number of fires 
is immediately multiplied. How much greater 
must the chances of conflagration be in a de- 
serted city built of wood and occupied by a 
foreign army ! 

The ferocious patriotism of Rostoptchin and 
the savagery of the French had nothing to do 
with the event. The burning of Moscow was 
due to the soldiers' pipes, to the fires used in 
cooking food, to the piles of wood, and to the 
negligence of hostile troops, when the inhabi- 
tants were replaced by foreigners. 

Even if there were incendiaries, which is 
very doubtful, since no one would have cared 
uselessly to have risked his life, they could not 
be considered as the cause of the conflagration, 
which would have taken place without them. 

It is in vain for the French to condemn the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 63 

ferocious patriotism of Rostoptchin, or for the 
Russians to blame the malefactor Bonaparte, 
for placing the heroic torch in the hands of the 
people. We are forced to acknowledge that 
such causes had no real existence. Moscow 
was burned as any town would be burned, 
when the houses are abandoned by their legiti- 
mate occupants, and when strangers enter and 
take possession of the cuisine. 

We may truthfully say that Moscow was 
burned by its inhabitants ; not, however, by 
those who remained, but by those who went 
away. 

Moscow, when occupied by the enemy, did 
not remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and 
other capitals, because the inhabitants did not 
sally forth to greet the French with bread and 
salt and the keys of the city, — they preferred 
to abandon their houses to the enemy. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



65 



VIII. 

THE FLANK MOVEMENT. 

After the battle of Borodino and the occupa- 
tion and burning of Moscow, the most impor- 
tant episode of this campaign, as all the world 
agrees, is the movement of the Russian army 
when it forsook the route to Riazan, and moved 
by way of Kalouga toward the camp of Tarou- 
tino — in a word, the flank movement beyond 
Krasnai'a Pakhra. 

Historians ascribe the glory of this move- 
ment to different persons, and do not agree 
upon any one name as the recipient of honor. 
Foreign historians, even the French, in speak- 
ing of this flank movement, pay homage to the 
genius of the chiefs of the Russian army. 

But why do chroniclers of battles, and, in 
their turn, the historians, believe that this flank 
movement was the ingenious invention of a 
single person, who thus saved Russia and over- 



^^ NAPOLEON'S 

threw Napoleon ? That is something which I 
am unable to explain. 

To begin with, it is not easy to understand 
why this movement indicates the quality of 
genius in him who devised it. To see that the 
best position for an unoccupied army is the 
place nearest a base of supply is something 
that does not require a great intellectual effort. 
A boy of thirteen would have been able to de- 
cide that in 1812 the best position for the 
Russian army after the retreat from Moscow 
would be on the road to Kalouga. 

It is still more difficult to understand why 
historians assign the salvation of the Russians 
and the destruction of the French to the exe- 
cution of this manoeuvre ; for, if the movement 
had been carried out under other conditions, it 
would have been disastrous to the Russians 
and beneficial to the French. The situation 
of the Russian army was improved after this 
movement, but that is no reason for asserting 
that the movement was the ameliorating cause. 

The movement in question was not only of 
no advantage to the Russians ; under other 
conditions it would have been fatal. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 57 

• What would have happened if Moscow had 
not been burned ? if Napoleon had taken the 
offensive instead of remaining inactive ? 

What if the Russian army had followed the 
advice of Bennigsen and Barclay, and had 
given battle at Krasnai'a Fakhra ? 

What would have been the result if the 
French had attacked the Russians when the 
latter were on the march beyond Fakhra ? 

What turn would events have taken if Na- 
poleon, after approaching Taroutino, had at- 
tacked the Russians with even a tenth part 
of the energy displayed at Smolensk ? 

What would have happened if the French 
had directed their course toward St. Feters- 
burg ? 

In every case, the flank movement, instead 
of being the salvation of Russia, would have 
been a source of disaster. 

Still more incomprehensible is the inability 
of historians to see how impossible it is to 
attribute the idea of a flank movement to any 
particular person. No one could plan it be- 
forehand. This manoeuvre, like the retreat to 
Fily, never presented itself to anybody in its 



68 NAPOLEON'S 

totality, but was developed little by little, mo- 
ment by moment, one event after another. It 
was the result of divergent incidents, and it 
appeared clearly as a definite movement only 
when it had been consummated and was an 
accomplished fact. 

In the council of war held by the Russian 
generals at Fily, the favorite opinion was for 
direct retreat by the most obvious route, that 
of Nishnei-Novgorod. The majority expressed 
adherence to this plan. But Lanski, who was 
in charge of the commissary department, in- 
formed the commander-in-chief that the army 
stores were concentrated principally in the 
provinces of Toula and Kalouga, and that if 
the army retreated upon Nishnei-Novgorod, the 
great river Oka would be between them and 
their stores, and, with the advent of winter, cut 
them off from their supplies. 

This was the first indication of the neces- 
sity obliging the army to renounce the plan 
of a direct retreat, which at first had seemed 
so obvious. 

The army moved southward, on the road 
to Riazan, to be nearer its base of supply. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ^g 

Then, the inactivity of the French who 
seemed to have lost sight of the Russian 
army, the necessity for protecting the arsenal 
at Toula, added to the advantage of proxim- 
ity to supplies, induced the Russian army to 
move still further south on the road to Toula. 

When at length Fakhra had been passed, 
and the army was moving on the way to 
Toula, the chiefs contemplated a halt at Po- 
dolsk, not thinking at all of taking up a po- 
sition at Taroutino. Various circumstances — 
among others, the approach of the French 
army, plans for giving battle, and the abun- 
dance of stores collected at Kalouga — obliged 
the Russian army to continue its southerly 
course, and, instead of moving further on the 
route to Toula, to take the route to Kalouga 
and approach Taroutino. 

We can no more tell who decided upon 
Taroutino as an objective point than we can 
tell when Moscow was abandoned. 

When the troops, after going through a 
great many unforeseen experiences, got to 
Taroutino, certain persons began to think that 
matters had gone on thus far in accordance 



70 



NAPOLEON'S 



with their plans, and to believe that the 
course of events had for a long time been 
known to them. 

The celebrated flank movement was very 
simple. The Russian army, moving back in 
a line directly opposite to that followed by 
the invaders, turned aside when the enemy 
no longer pursued, and naturally took the 
direction in which lay an abundance of sup- 
plies. 

If the Russian army had been without a 
commanding general, it would nevertheless 
have made the return movement about Mos- 
cow, and continued in a direction where there 
were more provisions and where the country 
was better suited to its needs. 

The change of route which led towards 
Riazan, Toula, and Kalouga, instead of toward 
Nishnei, was so natural that the foragers of the 
Russian army went readily in that direction, 
and it was the route, moreover, upon which 
Koutouzof had been ordered from St. Peters- 
burg to conduct his troops. 

On arriving at Taroutino, Koutouzof was 
blamed for having led his army in the di- 



RUSSIA A' CAMPAIGN. yi 

rection of Riazan, and he was informed of 
his position in regard to Kalouga, while at 
the same time he received a letter from the 
tsar containing unmerited reproaches. 

The Russian army is like a ball rolling 
in the direction of the impelling force of the 
campaign, and, after the battle of Borodino, as 
that force diminishes in power, tending toward 
a natural position. 

,- The merit of Koutouzof does not lie in flights 
of strategical genius, but is due to the fact 
that he is the only general in this campaign 
who understands the meaning of the events 
that are going on about him. 

He alone understood the inactivity of the 
French army, he alone persistently declared 
that the battle of Borodino was a victory for 
the Russians. He alone used all his power 
to restrain the Russian army from undertaking 
more battles, which would have been useless, 
although in his position as commander-in-chief 
he ought rather to have been ^ disposed to 
favor hostile measures. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. n^ 



IX. 

THE BATTLE OF TAROUTINO. 

The Russian army was directed on the one 
hand by Koutouzof and his staff, and on the 
other by the Emperor Alexander L, who was 
at St. Petersburg. 

Before news of the abandonment of Moscow 
had reached St. Petersburg, the tsar had drawn 
up a detailed plan of war and sent it to Koutou- 
zof for the latter's guidance. Although the plan 
was made with the understanding that Moscow 
was still in the hands of the Russians, it was 
approved by Koutouzofs staff and accepted as 
the basis of action. 

Koutouzof, however, wrote to St. Petersburg 
that it was very difficult to carry out a plan 
made at such a distance from the field. 

The only reply was more instructions from 
St. Petersburg aiming to solve difficulties, and, 
at the same time, inspectors charged to see 



74 



NAPOLEON'S 



that the orders were carried out and to send 
back reports. Moreover, changes took place 
in the staff of the Russian army. Bagration 
had been killed ; Barclay, considering himself 
ill-treated, withdrew, and these two generals had 
to be replaced. 

They debated with the utmost seriousness 
whether it would be better to put Mr. A in the 
place of Mr. B and Mr. B in the place of Mr. C, 
or, on the contrary, to put Mr. B in the place of 
Mr. C and Mr. C in the place of Mr. A ; as if 
one or the other of these appointments could 
have any influence whatever on the progress of 
events, aside from giving pleasure to Messrs. 
A, B, and C. 

Meanwhile, animosity between Koutouzof and 
the chief of staff, Bennigsen, the presence of 
the tsar's inspectors, and the changes that fol- 
lowed, favored party intrigues, which became 
more active than ever. 

Mr. A, by the most varied and intricate 
combinations, was undermining the authority of 
Messrs. B and C. 

The object of their intrigues was the war 
which they thought they were conducting, 



RUSSIAN- campaign: 



75 



while the campaign went on independently in 
its own way, without conforming at all to the 
plans of these gentlemen, but as a result of the 
real relations of the armies in motion. All 
these intersecting and conflicting plans repre- 
sented in the higher spheres of authority the 
faithfully reflected image of what ought to be 
accomplished. 

On October 14, Alexander I. wrote to 
Koutouzof the following letter, which was 
received by the commander-in-chief after the 
battle of Taroutino : — 

" Prince Mikhail Ilarionovitch ! — 
^*- Since September 14, Moscow has been in the hands of the 
enemy. Your latest reports are dated October 2, and in all 
this time you have not only done nothing to deliver the first 
capital, but since your last reports you have been continually 
in retreat. Serpoukhov is already occupied by the enemy, and 
Toula, with its celebrated arsenal so necessary to the army, is 
in danger. ^ 

** By General Wintzengerod's report, I see that a body of the 
enemy, composed of ten thousand soldiers, is moving towards 
St. Petersburg ; another body of several thousand men is 
marching upon Dmitrovo ; a third is advancing on the road to 
Vladimir; a fourth, also large, is between Rouza and 
Mozhaisk; and Napoleon himself was on October 7 at Mos- 
cow. . . . 

"When, as appears from this information, the enemy has 
scattered his forces in considerable detachments, and Napo- 



76 



NAPOLEON'S 



leon himself remains at Moscow with his Guard, is it possible 
that the strength of the enemy is still too great to prevent you 
from taking the offensive ? One might assume, with a convic- 
tion amounting to certainty, that you would pursue one or the 
other of these detachments, which are at least by an army 
corps weaker than the army which you command. 

" It seems as if you would have profited by these circum- 
stances to attack with advantage an enemy weaker than your- 
self, and either exterminate him, or at least oblige him to 
retire, thereby regaining the greater part of the territory now 
occupied by the enemy, and at the same time averting the dan- 
ger which menaces Toula and the other towns of the interior. 

" Upon you the responsibility will fall if the enemy succeeds 
in sending a considerable body of troops to St. Petersburg, 
and threatening the capital, which is almost destitute of sol- 
diers ; for, with the army which has been confided to you, if 
you act firmly and quickly, you have all the resources neces- 
sary to overcome these new evils. 

" Remember that you must justify yourself before the coun- 
try, which feels as an outrage the loss of Moscow! 

" I have already proved my good-will towards you. This 
good-will shall not grow less, but I and Russia have a right to 
demand from you all the zeal, all the fortitude, and all the 
success that your mind, your military talents, and the courage 
of the troops which you command do not fail to assure." 



But while this letter, which shows us the 
state of things as seen from St. Petersburg, was 
still on its way, Koutouzof could no longer 
restrain the army which he commanded, and 
which desired to take the offensive. They gave 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. yy 

battle. On October 14, a Cossack, Shapovalof, 
while on patrol duty, shot at a rabbit, and, en- 
tering the woods in pursuit of the wounded 
animal, stumbled upon the unguarded left flank 
of Murat's army. 

The Cossack, on his return to camp, laugh- 
ingly told his comrades how he had fallen into 
the hands of the French ; a cornet, overhearing 
this, related what he had heard to his com- 
mander. The latter sent for the Cossack and 
questioned him. 

The Cossack chiefs wished to profit by this 
opportunity and seize the enemy's horses ; but 
one of them who was in communication with 
headquarters told the chief of staff what had 
occurred. 

At this moment, the relations of the staff 
were in the most strained condition. 

Several days before, General Ermolof had 
sought out Bennigsen and implored him to use 
all his influence with Koutouzof in favor of 
assuming the offensive. 

** If I did not know you," was Bennigsen's 
reply, ^' I should think that you were asking m.e 
something with the hope that it would not be 



yS NAPOLEON'S 

granted ; I have only to advise Koutouzof to 
do a thing to induce him to do exactly the con- 
trary." 

The news brought in by the Cossacks being 
confirmed by a reconnaissance, it became evi- 
dent that the time was ripe for action. 

The strained cord broke. The hour of fate 
had struck. The die was cast. 

In spite of his fictitious power, his spirit, his ex- 
perience, and his knowledge of men, Koutouzof, 
— taking into consideration Bennigsen's reports 
to the tsar, the desire expressed by the majority 
of his generals, and the supposed wishes of the 
tsar himself; knowing that he was powerless 
to restrain longer a movement that was inevi- 
table — gave the order for an attack which he 
regarded as useless and harmful, and by so do- 
ing lent his approval to an accomplished fact. 

Bennigsen's memoir addressed to the tsar, 
and the stories of the Cossacks who blundered 
on to the left flank of the French army, were 
only the final indications of a necessity which 
from day to day had forced the order for attack. 
The Russians took the offensive on the 17th of 
October. 



RUSSIAN campaign: 79 

The result of the battle was far from what 
had been hoped, and displeased everybody. 

^' That's the way things always go with us, 

always contrary to what has been expected ! " 
the Russian generals said to each other after 
the battle ; just as they say the same thing 
to-day to make us understand that there is 
always some imbecile to thwart their efforts, 
while, "we would have acted very differently." 

Those who talk in this way do not know what 
war is or else they voluntarily deceive them- 
selves. 

Every battle, whether Taroutino, Borodino, 
or Austerlitz, goes on in a different way from 
the suppositions of the participants. This is a 
condition essential to war. ^ 

Innumerable and uncontrollable forces, — for 
nowhere is man more uncontrollable than in 
battle, where the question for each is that of 
life or death, — these uncontrollable forces, 
which influence the progress of the battle, can 
never be foreseen and can never^ be governed 
by a single guiding power. 

When several different forces act at the same 
time upon any given body, the direction in 



3o . NAPOLEON'S 

which the body moves will not be that of any 
one of the forces, but will be a middle course, 
as is demonstrated in mechanics by the diagonal 
in the parallelogram of forces. 
/-^If, in the accounts of historians, and es- 
pecially in those of French historians, we see 
that wars and battles are invariably carried out 
in accordance with plans made in advance, the 
only conclusion that I can come to in regard to 
these historians is that their descriptions are 
not true. 

,_ The battle of Taroutino did not justify the 
ideas of Toll, who wanted to put the troops in 
action in proper order and in conformity to 
predetermined dispositions ; it did not meet 
the expectations of Count Orlof, who wanted to 
make Murat prisoner ; it did not attain the end 
proposed by Bennigsen and others, and destroy 
the enemy at a single blow, that of officers who 
went into the fight to win personal distinction, 
or that of the Cossacks who were eager for 
booty, — etc. 

But if the principal aim of the attack, an aim 
justified by what took place, was to carry but 
the wishes of the Russian people, expel the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. gj 

enemy from Russia, and exterminate his army, 
— then it is evident that the battle, because of 
its very incoherence, was just the battle neces- 
sary at this part of the campaign. 

It is impossible to imagine as the issue of 
this battle a result more favorable to the final 
object of the campaign than the result which 
actually ensued. 

With very little effort, and, in spite of a 
serious lack of system, very small losses, the 
Russians obtained the most important results 
achieved during the entire campaign ; they 
passed from the defensive to the offensive, they 
laid bare the weakness of the French, and they 
gave to the French army a shock that sufficed 
to drive it into retreat. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



X. 

NAPOLEON AT MOSCOW. 

Napoleon enters Moscow after a brilliant 
victory ; he cannot doubt the success of his 
arms, for the French remain masters of the 
field of battle. 

The Russians retreat and give up their capi- 
tal. Moscow, stored with provisions, arms, and 
riches innumerable, falls into the hands of 
Napoleon. 

The Russian army, twice as weak as that of 
the enemy, passes an entire month without 
being able to assume the offensive. 

Napoleon's situation is certainly brilliant. 
And whether he falls upon the remains- of the 
Russian army and exterminates it with his 
doubly superior forces ; or whether he decides 
to offer terms of peace, and, if his offer is 
rejected, to move upon St. Petersburg, return- 
ing, in case of unsuccess, to Smolensk or Vilna; 



84 NAPOLEON'S 

or whether he is contented with retaining the 
excellent position which he already occupies, — 
to me it seems that the choice of any one of 
the courses I have suggested does not demand 
any extraordinary display of genius. 

It was only necessary to take the simplest 
and easiest way ; not to allow the army to 
engage in pillage, to prepare clothing for 
winter (there was enough in Moscow for the 
whole army), and to get together the pro- 
visions, which, as French historians affirm, 
were of such great quantity that they would 
have sufficed to supply the French troops for 
at least six months. 

And yet Napoleon, this genius of geniuses, 
who had, historians tell us, unlimited control of 
his army, did nothing of the sort-rx/ 

He did nothing of the sort ; but he used his 
power in favor of measures which were of all 
possible measures the most stupid and the 
most disastrous. 

^ Of all the plans he might have chosen, — to 
pass the winter at Moscow, to move upon 
Nishnei-Novgorod, to return from north to south 
following Koutouzof, — it is impossible, I say, to 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. gc 

imagine any plan more stupid or more disas- 
trous than that actually chosen by Napoleon. 

. This was the plan : To remain in Moscow till 
the month of October, allowing his soldiers to 
pillage the city ; and then to emerge from 
Moscow, after considering whether or not to 
leave a garrison behind him, to approach 
Koutouzof without giving battle, to move to the 
right as far as Malo-Yaroslavetz, without consid- 
ering the possibility of making a route of his 
own ; finally, instead of taking the course fol- 
lowed by Koutouzof, to withdraw toward Mozh- 
ai'sk through a devastated country. Once more 
I declare the impossibility of devising a plan 
more absurd in itself or more pernicious to the 
army. The assertion is fully proved by the 
results. 

I defy the ablest master of strategy to invent 
a plan which would have led the French army 
to destruction (independently of any action on 
the part of the Russian army) as infallibly as 
did that selected by Napoleon. 

Yes, the genius of Napoleon was guilty of 
this blunder. But to say that the emperor led 
his army to destruction because he wished to 



8^ NAPOLEON'S 

destroy it, or because he was very stupid, 
would be as false and as unjust as it would be 
to say that Napoleon led his troops to Moscow 
because he wished to do so and because he 
was a man of genius. 

In both cases, his personal action, which was 
of no more consequence than the personal 
action of any other soldier, only coincided with 
the laws of the progress of events. 

Because the events that followed did not 
justify Napoleon, historians say that his intel- 
lectual powers had grown weaker at Moscow. 
This assertion is erroneous. 

Napoleon at Moscow made use of all his 
intellectual power and all his knowledge to 
defend his own interests and those of his army 
in the best possible way, as he had always done 
before, and as he did afterwards, in 1813. Bona- 
parte's action at this period of his life was not 
less remarkable than it was in Egypt, in Italy, 
in Austria, and in Prussia. 

We do not know sufficiently well the real 
condition of his genius in Egypt, *' where from 
the summit of the pyramids forty centuries " 
looked down upon his greatness, for all his 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. %j 

great exploits there were recorded exclusively 
by French historians. 

Neither can we rate at its proper value his 
action in Austria and in Prussia, for with 
regard to these two countries we must draw 
our information from French and German 
sources ; and in a country where army corps 
surrender without striking a blow, and forts 
yield without a siege, Napoleon's genius would 
naturally be exalted as an explanation of a 
victorious campaign. 

But we Russians have no reason for acknowl- 
edging the genius of Napoleon. We have no 
shame to hide. We have paid dearly for the 
right to consider facts as they are, and this 
right we will yield to no one ! 

The conduct of Napoleon at Moscow was as 
astonishing as it was anywhere else. From 
the time that he entered the capital, he did not 
cease to issue order upon order and to make 
plan upon plan. The absence of the inhabi- 
tants and of deputations, even the burning of 
the city, did not trouble him at all. He forgot 
nothing, neither the welfare of his army, nor 
the acts of the enemy, nor the good of the 



SS NAPOLEON'S 

Russian people, nor the administration of 
affairs at Paris, nor diplomatic combinations in 
the event of a possible peace. 

In his purely military capacity. Napoleon, as 
soon as he has entered Moscow, gives strict or- 
ders to General Sebastiani to watch the move- 
ments of the Russian army ; then he sends 
troops in all directions, and orders Murat to 
pursue Koutouzof. At the same time, he forti- 
fies the Kremlin, and traces upon the map of 
Russia a plan for a future campaign. 

Napoleon the diplomatist sends for Captain 
Yakovlef, who had been despoiled of his com- 
mand, knd had been unable to get away from 
Moscow. To him Napoleon expounds his 
political views, with the utmost magnanimity, 
and then writes a letter to the Emperor Alex- 
ander, informing his '' brother and friend " that 
Rostoptchin has behaved very badly at Mos- 
cow ; and he sends Captain Yakovlef to St. 
Petersburg to deliver this message to his sover- 
eign. Napoleon expresses the same ideas and 
shows the same magnanimity to Toutolmin ; 
and sends also this aged person to St. Peters- 
burg to enter into negotiations with the tsar. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. gg 

As the exponent of military law, Napoleon, 
after the conflagration, gives orders that the in- 
cendiaries shall be hunted down and put to 
death ; and then, to punish the malefactor 
Rostoptchin, orders his houses to be set on 
fire. 

As administrator of public affairs, Napoleon 
grants a constitution to Moscow, organizes a 
municipal government, and issues the following 
proclamation : — 

INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW ! 

'"Your miseries are great, but His Majesty the Emperor 
and King desires to put an end to your sufferings. 

"Terrible examples have shown you how he punishes dis- 
obedience and crime. Severe measures have been taken to 
put an end to disorder and to restore general security. 

" A paternal administration, composed of men chosen from 
among you, will govern your municipality. The administra- 
tive body will care for you, your needs, and your interests. 

"The members of this municipal government will be dis- 
tinguished by a red scarf, which they will wear in form of 
cross ; the mayor will wear beside the scarf a white belt. 

" But when not on service, the members of the municipal 
government will wear simply a red band upon the left arm. 

" The municipal police is instituted in conformity to its 
ancient organization, and thanks to its vigilance the best of 
order already reigns. 

" The government has named two general commissioners, 
or policetneisters, and twenty magistrates, or tchastiii pristavs. 



go 



NAPOLEON'S 



assigned to different portions of the city. You will recognize 
them by a white band worn upon the left arm. 

" Several churches of different sects are open, and divine 
service is there celebrated without obstacle. 

" Your fellow-citizens are daily returning to their houses, 
and orders have been given that they shall have the aid and 
protection due to their misfortune. 

" Such are the means by which the government hopes to re- 
establish order and mitigate your misfortunes. But to attain 
that end, you must unite your efforts with theirs, you must 
forget, if possible, the evils that you have endured, you must 
cherish the hope of a less cruel destiny, you must be con- 
vinced that an inevitable and infamous death awaits all those 
who make any assault upon your lives or your property, and 
especially you must believe that your welfare will be cher- 
ished, for such is the will of the greatest and most just of all 
monarchs. 

"Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you maybe! — 
re-establish public confidence, that source of happiness in 
every state, live as brothers, aid and protect one another, be 
united to oppose all criminal manifestations, obey the mili- 
tary and municipal authorities, and soon your tears will cease 
to flow." 

With regard to the provisioning of the army, 
Napoleon gave orders for the troops to forage 
through the city to procure food ; he thought 
thus to assure both bread and soldiers for the 
future. 

With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered 
that the popes should be restored to their 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



91 



churches, and the forms of worship be re- 
established. 

As to trade and the provisioning of the army, 



he issued the following 



PROCLAMATION. 

" You, peaceable inhabitants o£ Moscow, tradesmen and 
workmen whom misfortunes have caused to flee from this city, 
and you, dispersed farmers, who through unfounded terror 
remain concealed in the fields, — take notice ! 

*' Peace reigns in the capital, and order is re-established. 
Your compatriots leave their retreats without fear, knowing 
that they will be respected. 

" Any violence shown to them or prejudicial to their prop- 
erty is immediately punished. 

" His Majesty the Emperor and King protects them, and 
counts none as his enemies among you save those who disobey 
his orders. 

" He desires to put an end to your sufferings, and restore 
you to your houses and families. 

" Respond to his benevolent intentions, and come to us 
without fear. 

" Inhabitants ! 

" Return with confidence to your dwellings. You will soon 
find means of subsistence. 

" Tradesmen and sons of toil ! 

" Return to your labors : houses, shops, watchmen await you, 
and for your labors you will receive the wage which is your 
due. 

" And you, finally, peasants, come out of your forests, where 
you have been crouching in fear ; return boldly to your isbas, 
and be persuaded that you will find protectors in us. 



92 



NAPOLEON'S 



" Great markets have been established in the city, where the 
peasants may bring all the surplus products of their lands. 

" To assure the free sale of these products, the government 
has taken the following measures : 

" I. From this day, peasants, farmers, and other inhabitants of 
the suburbs of Moscow, may without danger bring their prod- 
ucts to Moscow, to the two markets established for the pur- 
pose — in Mokhovaia Street and in the Okhotni Riad. 

" 2. These products will be purchased at prices agreed upon 
between seller and buyer, but if he who sells thinks the price 
unjust, he has the right to take away his goods, and no one 
shall prevent him from doing so. 

"3. For this reason, large detachments of soldiers will, on 
Sundays, Wednesdays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, be placed in 
the principal thoroughfares to protect the carts and horses of 
the peasants. 

"4. The same measures will be taken to protect the return 
of the peasants to their villages. 

" 5. Measures will be taken to re-establish the ordinary mar- 
kets with as little delay as possible. 

" Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, tradesmen, 
workmen, to whatever nation you may belong ! 

"We urge you to follow the paternal wishes of His Majesty 
the Emperor and King, and to aid him in the establishment of 
the general welfare. 

" Bring to his feet respect and confidence, and do not hesi- 
tate to unite yourselves with us." 

To keep up the spirits of the troops and the 
inhabitants, reviews were constantly held and 
there was an incessant distribution of decora- 
tions. The emperor rode through the streets 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. " q^ 

on horseback to comfort the inhabitants, and, in 
spite of his preoccupation with state matters, 
he visited in person the theatres established 
by his formal orders. 

As for charity, that virtue which doth most 
become a king. Napoleon displayed it also to 
the utmost extent that could be expected of 
him. 

.-— >By his direction the words My Mother's 
House were inscribed upon buildings devoted 
to public charity, and by this loving act he 
united filial sentiment with the grand virtue 
of a monarch. 

He visited the Foundling Asylum, and, allow- 
ing his white hands to be kissed by the chil- 
dren saved by his care, he magnanimously 
conversed with Toutolmin. 
. Moreover, as we learn from the eloquent 
narrative of Thiers, Napoleon ordered that 
the sums due his troops should be paid in 
counterfeit Russian money manufactured by 
himself. 

*^ Emphasizing the employment of these 
means by an act worthy of him and of the 
French army," says the author of The Consu- 



94 NAPOLEON'S 

late and the Empire, *' he gave aid to those 
who had suffered from the effects of the 
fires. But provisions being too precious to 
be given to foreigners, the greater part of 
whom were enemies, Napoleon preferred to 
provide money, of which he had a supply 
ready, and he distributed among them a quan- 
tity of paper rubles." 

Finally, to maintain the discipline of the 
army, he issued orders threatening with severe 
punishment all infractions of the rules of the 
service, and he intimated that pillaging ought 
to be stopped. 

But, strangely enough, all these arrange- 
ments and measures and plans, which were 
not at all inferior to those usually taken under 
similar circumstances, moved at random and 
without meaning, like the hands of a clock no 
longer connected with the mechanism behind 
the dial. 

The plan for the campaign — the plan of 
which Thiers says *' that the genius of Napo- 
leon never imagined anything more profound, 
more skilful, or more admirable," and which, 
disputing the assertions of M. Fain, he proves 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 05 

to have been devised, not on the 5th of Octo- 
ber, but on the 15th of that month — this plan 
was never carried out, and could not be, for it 
had no basis whatever in reality. 

It was useless to fortify the Kremlin ; to 
accomplish this work it was necessary to 
destroy the mosque, as Napoleon called the 
Church of St. Basil. The mines placed under 
the Kremlin served only the personal desire of 
the emperor, who wished to see the edifice blown 
up when he had got outside of the city — in 
other words, it was like a child beating the floor 
upon which he had fallen and hurt himself. 

During the retreat of the French army, a 
most unheard-of thing took place. Napoleon 
was constantly on the lookout for the enemy, 
whom he knew to be at his heels, although the 
French army had lost sight of the pursuing 
Russian army, numbering not less than sixty 
thousand men. According to Thiers, it was 
due to the ability of Murat — to his genius, if 
I mistake not — that the French performed 
that brilliant feat of arms by which they dis- 
covered, like a needle in a haystack, the sixty 
thousand men of the Russian army. 



96 



NAPOLEON'S 



From the diplomatic point of view, all the 
declarations of magnanimity and justice made 
by Napoleon to Yakovlef and to Toutolmin 
were entirely without effect. Alexander I. did 
not receive these two ambassadors from Napo- 
leon, and did not reply to the letters which 
they carried. 

After the execution of the supposed incen- 
diaries, the other half of Moscow burned as the 
first had done. 

The establishment of a municipal govern- 
ment did not put an end to pillage, and was of 
service only to the municipal councillors, who, 
under the pretext of establishing order, plun- 
dered Moscow, and thought only of saving 
their own property. 

As to religion, which he had conciliated so 
readily in Egypt by visiting a mosque. Napo- 
leon discovered that matters did not go so 
easily in Moscow. Two or three popes whom 
the French soldiers unearthed wished to pay 
homage to the emperor, but, one of them, while 
conducting divine service, having been struck 
upon both cheeks by a French soldier, they 
renounced their project. This is the account 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. gy 

the French commissioner gave of the manner 
in which he conducted his stewardship. 

'' The priest whom I had discovered and 
commanded to begin again saying mass 
cleared and closed the church ; that night they 
went again to force open the doors, smashed 
the locks, tore the books in pieces, and com- 
mitted all sorts of disorders." 

As far as the re-establishment of trade was 
concerned, the proclamation to workmen and 
laborers and to the peasants did not have any 
effect. The laborious artisans did not exist ; 
the peasants seized the commissioners who 
ventured outside the city with the proclama- 
tion, and put them to death. 

With regard to amusements, the result did 
not justify Napoleon's efforts. The theatres 
that were established in the Kremlin and in 
the house of Posniakof were soon closed 
because the actors and actresses had been 
despoiled of all they possessed. 

Even his charities did not^ bring forth the 
anticipated fruits. Good and bad assignats 
were so abundant that neither class was of any 
value. The French, in return for their booty. 



g8 NAPOLEON'S 

would accept nothing but gold. The assignats 
that Napoleon distributed among the unfortu- 
nates with such unparalleled generosity were 
worthless, and silver itself was discounted in 
favor of gold. 

But the most striking proof of the ineffi- 
ciency of all these orders is the result of the 
measures taken by Napoleon to put an end to 
pillage and re-establish discipline. Here are 
some of the reports made by the commanding 
officers : " Pillage continues in the city. In 
spite of the order that it shall be stopped, 
order is not yet re-established, and there is 
not a merchant in legitimate trade. Sutlers 
alone venture to sell anything, and they are 
objects of pillage." 

Another report : "A part of my district 
continues to be pillaged by soldiers of the 
Third Corps, who, not content with taking 
from the unhappy refugees the little that they 
have, are even brutal enough to strike them 
with their swords, as I myself saw in several 
instances." 

A third report : " There is nothing new ; the 
soldiers still continue theft and pillage." 



RUSSIAIV CAMPAIGN'. 



99 



On the 9th of October : " Theft and pil- 
lage continue. There is a band of robbers in 
our district, who ought to be put down by a 
strong guard." 

On the nth of October, the governor of 
Moscow wrote : '* The emperor is greatly- 
displeased that, in spite of his strict orders 
against pillage, detachments of marauders from 
the Guard are continually entering the Krem- 
lin. In the Old Guard, disorder and pillage 
were renewed yesterday and to-day more de- 
cidedly than ever. The emperor sees with sor- 
row the chosen soldiers, whose duty it is to de- 
fend his own person, and who ought to give an 
example of obedience, carrying disobedience 
so far as to desooil cellars and warehouses 
stocked with stores for the army ; others have 
fallen so low that they refuse to obey the senti- 
nels, and revile and beat them. 

" The grand marshal of the palace complains 
bitterly that, notwithstanding his reiterated 
command, the soldiers continue to perform the 
offices of nature in all the courts, and even 
under the windows of the emperor." 

Every day passed by the army at Moscow 



100 NAPOLEON'S 

hastened its disorganization and its end. It 
was like a herd fleeing in disorder, and tramp- 
ling under its feet the food that would have 
saved it from hunger. 

And yet this army would not stir from Mos- 
cow. 

Only when the convoys were seized by the 
Russians on the road to Smolensk, and the 
news of the battle of Taroutino came, panic 
seized the PYench troops, and they took to 
flight with the utmost haste. 

The news of the defeat at Taroutino, re- 
ceived unexpectedly by Napoleon during a re- 
view, inspired in him, Thiers tells us, the 
desire to punish the Russians, and he gave the 
order to begin the retreat, in accordance with 
the demand of the whole army. 

On leaving Moscow, the troops loaded them- 
selves down with all the booty they could get 
together. 

Napoleon also had his own treasure to take 
with him. Seeing the vehicles obstructing the 
route of the army, Napoleon, to adopt Thiers' 
expression, was seized with horror. But, with 
all his experience of war, he did not order the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. iqi 

superfluous wagons to be destroyed, as he had 
done when they were approaching Moscow. 
He cast a glance over the coaches and calashes 
in which the soldiers were travelling, and said 
that it was well — that these vehicles would be 
useful for carrying provisions, the sick, and the 
wounded. 

—•The situation of the army was like that of a 
wounded animal feeling death to be near and 
not knowing how to escape it. 

To watch the manoeuvres and the purposes 
of Napoleon and his army, from the time he 
entered Moscow to the destruction of his 
forces, is like watching the convulsions and the 
agonized struggles of a beast wounded to the 
death. Often the wounded animal, hearing the 
noise of footsteps, runs directly in front of the 
always advancing hunter, turns, and hastens its 
own end. 

Napoleon, under the pressure of his army, 
acted in this way. 

The noise of the defeat at Taroutino alarmed 
the wounded animal. It jumped directly into 
the line of fire ; ran toward the hunter, turned, 
fled, and, like all hunted animals, sprang sud- 



102 NAPOLEON'S 

denly backward by the most dangerous, the 
most difficult, but the best known road, the 
road of its former trail. 

-- We imagine Napoleon to have been the di- 
rector of all these movements, just as the sav- 
ages imagine the figure-head upon the prow of 
a vessel to be the power that moves it onward. 
Napoleon, throughout the whole of this cam- 
paign, was like a child seated in a carriage 
clasping the sides, and imagining it is he that 
makes the horses go. ..^ 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 103 



XL 

THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. 

From the moment when Koutouzof learned 
that the French had left Moscow, and were 
beating a retreat, until the very end of the cam- 
paign, he used all his power, finesse as well as 
persuasion, with the sole purpose of preventing 
his troops from taking the offensive, and of 
turning them aside from encounters and com- 
bats with an enemy who was already doomed. . 

Doktourof goes to Malo-Yaroslavetz, but 
Koutouzof is in no hurry, and simply gives the 
order to leave Kalouga, knowing that, in case of 
necessity, it will be easy to retire behind that 
town. 

Koutouzof retires ; but the enemy does not 
wait for his retreat before beginning its flight 
in another direction. 
.Historians describe the clever way in which 
Napoleon turned upon Taroutino and Malo- 
Yaroslavetz, and indulge in all sorts of hy- 



I04 



NAPOLEON'S 



potheses about what would have happened if 
Napoleon had been able to enter the rich prov- 
inces to the south. 

Without taking into consideration the fact 
that nothing prevented Bonaparte from enter- 
ing the provinces in question, since the Rus- 
sians had given him a free field, historians forget 
that at this time no circumstance or person 
would have been able to save the French army, 
j-^ for it carried within itself the elements of its 
own destruction. 

Why did the army which had found at Mos- 
cow an abundance of provisions, and, instead of 
keeping them, had scattered them under its 
feet ; the army which at Smolensk, instead of 
gathering stores, had given itself up to pil- 
lage, — why did this army now turn toward 
Kalouga, where it was sure to encounter a 
Russian population similar to that of Moscow, 
and the same dangers from fire .''-^^ 

This army was no longer able to retrieve 
itself. At Borodino and the pillage of Moscow 
it gathered the seeds of decompositionX 

The men of this so-called *' Grand Army " 
ran, like their leaders, they knew not whither ; 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 105 

and all, from Napoleon to the lowliest soldier, 
had but one desire, that of escaping from a 
situation which seemed to them without mean- 
ing and without end. 

And so, when, at Malo-Yaroslavetz, Napo- 
leon's generals held the semblance of a council, 
to discuss various projects, the last opinion 
offered, that of General Mouton, prevailed. 
This simple and single-minded soldier had dis- 
covered the thought of the whole army : they 
must get away as quickly as possible. No one, 
not even Napoleon, opened his mouth to pro- 
test against a necessity recognized by all. 

But, although every one agreed that they 
must depart, they nevertheless felt the humilia- 
tion of flight. Some external impulse was 
needed to overcome this sentiment. The 
shock came in the form of what Frenchmen 
call "the ambush of the emperor."* 

The day after the council. Napoleon, pre- 
tending to inspect his troops and examine the 
field of battle, rode to the outer lines, accom- 

* Le Jiourra de Vemperettr — referring to the cries uttered by- 
Cossacks when making a sudden attack upon an unsuspecting 
enemy. — H. S. 



I06 NAPOLEON'S 

panied by his staff of marshals and by his 
guard. [ Some Cossacks, circling about in 
search of plunder, swept down upon the em- 
peror, and there can be little doubt that he 
was made prisoner^ 

^.„That love of booty which was the destruc- 
tion of the French army, and which on this 
occasion, as at Taroutino, led the Cossacks to 
think only of pillage, saved Napoleon. The 
Cossacks paid no attention to the emperor, but 
devoted themselves to the spoils, and Napoleon 
had a chance to escape. - 

—When the French saw that the ** children of 
the Don " had been able to lay hold upon the 
emperor in the midst of his own army, it 
became clear to them that there was only one 
thing to be done — they must beat a retreat, by 
the shortest and best known road.-^^ 
^Napoleon at forty was large of paunch, and 
no longer felt his former agility and courage. 
He submitted to necessity, under the influence 
of the fright given him by the Cossacks, sided 
with General Mouton, and, as the historians 
put it, gave the order to begin the retreat along 
the road to Smolensk. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. joy 

The fact that Napoleon accepted Mouton's 
proposition, and that the French troops began 
to retire, does not prove that the movement 
was due to Napoleon ; it simply proves that the 
causes which were pushing the army in the 
direction of MozhaYsk had also their influence 
upon Napoleon himself. 

[When a man is on a journey he has always a 
destination in view. If a man undertakes to 
travel a distance of six hundred miles, it must 
be because he looks for something good at the 
end. He must anticipate a promised land, to 
have strength enough to pass over so long a 
distance. 

/ When the French entered Russia, their 
promised land was Moscow ; but when they 
fled from Moscow, their promised land was the 
country whence they came>\ This country was 
far away, and when a man starts out on a 
journey of six hundred miles, he is sure to for- 
get the end in view, and he looks for consola- 
tions along the way. 

"To-day," he says, "I will go ten leagues, 
and then I will rest ; " and, although this stage 



I08 NAPOLEON'S 

of his journey is not much nearer to his ulti- 
mate destination, upon it he concentrates all 
his hopes and all his desires. 

(h. man's aspirations are always amplified and 
increased by action. ; 

To the French, returning over the familiar 
way to Smolensk, the final end in view — to 
get back each to his own house — was too far 
away, and all their desires and hopes, which 
had attained enormous proportions, centred 
upon Smolensk. They did not expect to find 
there many provisions or fresh troops ; on the 
contrary, Napoleon and all the generals of the 
army knew very well that there was nothing to 
be found at Smolensk, but the limited perspec- 
tive of this stage of the journey was the only 
thing that could give the soldiers the power to 
march and to endure the privations of the 
moment. Those who knew the truth and 
those who knew it not alike sighed for Smo- 
lensk as their promised land. 

Once on the road, the French hurried toward 
this fictitious destination with a remarkable 
energy and a still more astonishing velocity. 
This energy arose not only from the idea of a 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



109 



common end to which they were attracted, but 
also from their enormous numbers. This great 
multitude, as if obedient to the physical law 
of attraction, drew to itself all isolated atoms. 
This compact mass of one hundred thousand 
men moved on in a single body like an indi- 
vidual. 

Each one of the men, taken by himself, 
wished for but one thing — to fall into captiv- 
ity, and so to be delivered from the horror and 
sufferings of a forced march. But the influ- 
ence of the common impulse which bore them 
toward Smolensk carried each one in the same 
direction. An entire corps could not surrender 
to a single battalion, and, although the French 
profited by every convenient and honorable 
occasion that offered itself for separation from 
their fellows and submission to the Russians, 
such occasions were not always at hand. 

The great numbers of the French and the 
rapidity of their march prevented them from 
surrendering, and made it not only difficult but 
impossible for the Russians to arrest a move- 
ment in which was concentrated the entire 
energy of so enormous a mass. 



no NAPOLEON'S 

The mechanical disruption of the body could 
not, beyond a certain limit, hasten the process 
of decomposition which was already in prog- 
ress. 

It is impossible to melt a snowball in an 
instant. There is a certain limit of time during 
which no degree of heat will be able to melt 
the snow. On the contrary, the greater the 
heat, the more solidified is the snow which re- 
mains. 

^.^With the exception of Koutouzof, none of the 
Russian generals understood what was going 
on. When they heard of the retreat of the 
French army on the road to Smolensk, they 
began to realize the truth of what Koutouzof 
had foreseen on the night of October ii. All 
the leading generals of the army wished to 
distinguish themselves, wished to bar the road 
of the French, to take them prisoners, to accel- 
erate their flight ; all were hot for pursuit. 

Koutouzof alone employed all his powers, and 
those of a commanding general are not very 
great, to resist this idea of an offensive move- 
ment. 

He could not say to his staff what we can 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. m 

say to-day — why fight battles, why lose your 
own men and rush ferociously out to kill unfor- 
tunate wretches who will find death without 
your aid ? why so much effort, when from Mos- 
cow to Viasma, without any combat whatever, a 
third of their army has disappeared ? 

Koutouzof could not use this language to his 
generals, but, giving them from his wisdom • 
what he supposed they could understand, he 
said, '' Give the enemy every chance ; it is the 
surest way of destroying him ; " but they 
mocked him, calumniated him, and, boasting 
and exulting, they hurled themselves upon 
the expiring animal to rend it and cut it in 
pieces. 

At Viasma, Generals Ermolof, Miloradovitch, 
Platof, and others, finding themselves near the 
French, could not restrain themselves from cut- 
ting off the retreat of two army corps, and they 
derided Koutouzof by sending him a sheet of 
blank paper in lieu of a report. 

In spite of Koutouzofs efforts to restrain his 
army, his troops assailed the French, and en- 
deavored to bar their way. We are told that 
regiments of infantry, led by bands of music. 



112 NAPOLEON'S 

advanced to the attack, and killed thousands of 
men without losing one of their own number. 

And yet they could not check the fugitives, 
they could not exterminate the enemy. The 
French army drew its ranks more closely to- 
gether, because of the danger, and advanced 
with undiminished velocity along this fatal road 
which led to Smolensk. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 113 



XII. 

THE VICTORIES AND WHAT FOLLOWED. 

The battle of Borodino, followed by the oc- 
cupation of Moscow, and finally by the retreat 
of the French army without the intervention 
of another battle, is one of the most instructive 
events in history. 

^ Historians agree that the external action of 
states and peoples, when their interests conflict, 
is expressed by war. They have many times 
recorded the fact that after successes or re- 
verses of arms the power of states and peoples 
has increased or diminished. 

It seems strange, on reading the story of a 
war, to find such a king or such an emperor 
getting his troops together, attacking the ene- 
my's army, winning a victory, killing three 
thousand, five thousand, ten thousand men, and 
for this reason vanquishing a whole state com- 
prising a population of millions of men. It is 
hard to understand why the defeat of an army 



114 



NAPOLEON'S 



— the loss of a hundredth part of a people's 
forces — should involve the submission of the 
entire people. And yet the facts of history, as 
they are taught to us, confirm the justice of 
the assertion that the success in arms of any 
people at war with another is the cause, or at 
least the true sign, of its own increase in 
power, and of decreased power on the part of 
the enemy. 

When troops have won a victory, the powers 
of the victorious people are extended to the 
detriment of the vanquished. When troops 
have been beaten, the loss of power on the part 
of the people is proportionate to the defeat ; 
and when the troops have been entirely con- 
quered, the people are completely vanquishedr^y 

This is the lesson that history teaches us, 
from the most ancient to the most recent times. 
All of Napoleon's wars confirm its truth. - ^ 

Iti proportion as the Austrian troops were 
beaten, Austria lost her power, while the 
strength of France increased and acted in 
new directions. The French victories at Jena 
and Austerlitz destroyed the independence of 
Prussia. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. n^ 

But in 1812 the French bore off the victory 
of Muskova, and even seized Moscow, and yet 
immediately after these triumphs, without the 
fighting of any more battles, Russia continued to 
to exist, and this victorious army of six hundred 
thousand men was exterminated, and with it the 
France of Napoleon. Try as we may to force 
the facts to accommodate themselves to the rules 
of history, no one can say that the battle-field 
of Borodino was won by the Russians, or that, 
after the occupation of Moscow, battles were 
fought that decimated Napoleon's army, — this 
is not possible. 

After the victory of the French at Borodino, 
there was no general battle, there was not the 
least engagement of any importance ; and yet 
the French army perished. What does this fact 
signify } 

If such a thing had occurred in the history 
of China, we should have said that it was not 
a historical event. 

This is the favorite ruse of historians when 
the facts do not agree with their theories. 

If it was a question of a minor war, with in- 
considerable forces on either side, we might 



Il6 NAPOLEON'S 

have said that the event was an exception to 
the general rule. 

But it took place under the eyes of our 
fathers ; it meant to them the life or death of 
their country, and this war was the most mo- 
mentous of all the wars known. 

That period in the campaign of 1812 extend- 
ing from the battle of Borodino to the retreat 
of the French proves not only that a battle 
won is not always a source of conquest, but 
that it may not be even a sign of victory; this 
event shows us that the force which decides the 
destiny of peoples does not consist in conquer- 
ors, or in armies, or in battles, but in something 
entirely different. 

y French historians, describing the condition of 
the troops before they left Moscow, assure us 
that everything was in good order in the 
"Grand Army," excepting the cavalry, the ar- 
tillery, and the wagon-trains ; moreover, forage 
was lacking for the horses and cattle. There 
was no remedy for this evil, for the mouzhiks 
preferred to burn their hay rather than to give 
it to the French. 

The victory won by the French did not lead 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. ny 

to the usual results, because the mouzhiks Karp, 
Vlass, and others who went to Moscow with 
wagons after the departure of the French in 
search of plunder, and who gave no proof of 
any heroic sentiment, yet refused to carry 
hay to Moscow ; in spite of the money offered 
to them, they preferred to burn the hay 
rather than to have it used for the service of 
the enemy. 

Imagine two men engaged in a duel with 
swords according to the rules of fencing. For a 
considerable time their swords meet and cross ; 
then all at-once one of the duellists, feeling that 
he has been wounded, and realizing that the 
affair is not a joke, but that his life depends 
upon it, throws aside his sword, and, seizing 
the first stick that comes to hand, begins to 
administer blows with his cudgel to right and 
left. 

Imagine, still further, that this man, who has 
had recourse to a method so simple and effi- 
cacious, is imbued with traditions of chivalry, 
and, wishing to conceal the truth, declares that 
he came out victor according to the rules of 



Il8 NAPOLEON'S 

fencing. The confusion that would enter into 
his story can easily be understood. 

The duellist who demands an encounter ac- 
cording to the rules of fencing is the French ; 
his enemy, who throws away his sword and takes 
up a club, is the Russians ; those who try to 
make the combat agree with the rules are the 
historians who have described the campaign in 
Russia. 

With the burning of Smolensk the' campaign 
in Russia took a form until then unknown in 
the art of war. There were only burnings of 
towns and villages, and battles followed by pre- 
cipitous retreats. 

The retreat after the victory of Borodino, the 
burning of Moscow, the pursuit of the maraud- 
ers, the sequestrated provisions, the guerilla 
warfare, — all these things were contrary to the 
rules of military tactics. 

Napoleon felt this, and, when he had made 
his entry into Moscow in accordance with the 
rules of the game, he discovered that the hand 
of his enemy held a club instead of a sword, 
and after that he did not cease to complain 
that the war, as conducted by Koutouzof and 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



119 



Alexander I., was not conducted according to 
rule — as if there were any need of rules for 
killing men. 

But in vain the French complain that the 
Russians do not conform to the rules of war ; 
in vain the superior officers of the Russian 
army blush at this method of defence with the 
cudgel, and desire a position where they can 
fight according to rule, — quarte, tierce, and a 
clever thrust, — the mouzhik has raised his 
club in all its terrible and majestic power, and, 
caring nothing for good taste and the rules, 
with a stupid but efficacious simplicity, striking 
out instinctively, falls upon the enemy and 
beats ^him incessantly, until the army of the 
invaders has perished. 

Honor to the people who did not do as the 
French did in 18 13, when they saluted the 
enemy according to the rules of the game, and, 
holding out their swords with politeness and 
grace, gave them up to their magnanimous 
conqueror. Honor to the people. who in days of 
misfortune did not stop to ask how others had 
acted in conformity to the rules in similar 
circumstances, but who simply and quickly 



120 NAPOLEON'S 

seized the first club at hand, and showered 
blows upon the enemy with redoubled energy, 
until the feeling of anger and vengeance that 
filled their hearts gave place to contempt and 
pity \(\^ 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j2i 



XIII. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE TROOPS AND GUERILLA 
WARFARE. 

^^-One of the most obvious and advantageous 
infractions of the so-called rules of war is the 
action of isolated individuals against the strict- 
ly military combinations. This sort of action 
always occurs in wars of a popular char- 
acter. Instead of meeting the enemy in a 
compact body, men disperse, attack separately, 
retire when they see themselves threatened 
by any considerable force, to reappear at the 
first favorable opportunity. 
>- So fought the Guerillas in Spain, the Mount- 
aineers in the Caucasus, and the Russians in 
1812. 

Warfare of this sort is called irregular or 
guerilla warfare and by speaking of it in these 
terms we explain its meaning. 

This sort of warfare is not only at variance 
with the rules of military art ; it is in contra- 



122 NAPOLEON'S 

diction to that infallible law of tactics which 
demands that the assailant shall concentrate 
his troops, and be at the moment of combat 
stronger than his enemy. Guerilla warfare, 
always successful, as history proves, is entirely 
opposed to that law. 

The contradiction arises from the fact that 
military science judges the strength of troops 
by their numbers. Military science says : The 
more troops, the greater strength ; the great 
battalions are always right. 

An assertion like this bases military science 
upon that theory in mechanics which, consid- 
ering moving bodies only with reference to 
their masses, affirms that their forces of 
momentum will be equal or unequal as their 
masses are equal or unequal. 

Now, momentum (the quantity of movement) 
is the product of the mass multiplied by the 
velocity. 

In war the momentum of troops is the prod- 
uct of the mass multiplied by an unknown 
quantity, x. 

Military science, discovering, from a great 
many examples in history, that the masses of 



RUSSIAN campaign: 



123 



troops do not correspond with the strength of 
armies, and that small detachments have con- 
quered large ones, recognizes confusedly the 
existence of an unknown factor, which it tries 
to find now in geometrical combinations, now 
in differences of armament, but especially — 
because that seems to be the simplest way of 
all — in the genius of the commanders. 

These values are given in vain to the factor 
in question ; the results are not in accordance 
with historical facts. 

y^We must renounce the false idea, invented 
for the pleasure of heroes, that if the arrange- 
ments made by the commanders are carried 
out in the war, we shall find x. 

X is the spirit of the troops, the more or less 
intense desire of all the men composing them to 
fight, independently of the fact whether they 
are under the command of a man of genius 
or an imbecile, whether they fight in two or 
three ranks, whether they are armed with 
clubs or with guns delivering thirty shots a 
minute. 

^- Men who are eager to fight always put them- 
selves in the most advantageous position for 



124 NAPOLEON'S 

the struggle. The spirit of the army is the 
factor which, multiplied by the mass, gives the 
product of power. 

To determine and express the meaning of 
that unknown factor, the spirit of the army, 
is the duty of science. 

The problem will be solved only when we 
stop putting in place of x the conditions of 
the moment, such as the dispositions of the 
commanders, the armament, and so on, and 
realize that x in all its integration is the more 
or less active desire animating the men to 
confront danger. Only then shall we be able to 
express known historical facts by means of equa- 
tions, and so determine the unknown factor. 

Ten men, or ten battalions, or ten divisions, 
fighting with fifteen men, or fifteen battalions, 
or fifteen divisions, conquer the latter, killing 
their enemies or taking them prisoners, losing 
themselves only four men, battalions, or divis- 
ions. One side has lost fifteen, the other 
four. This may be expressed in the following 

equation : — 

4r=i5jj/; 
whence, 

x: y :: 15 .-4. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 125 

This equation does not give the value of the 
unknown quantity, but it expresses the rela- 
tions which the two unknown factors bear to 
one another, and, by putting into the form of 
similar equations different historical units, — 
battles, campaigns, periods of war, — we shall 
obtain a series of numbers from which we 
may no doubt discover laws. 

The rule of tactics commanding troops to 
act together in an attack and separately in 
a retreat undoubtedly expresses the truth 
that the strength of troops depends upon 
their courage. Better discipline is required 
to lead men against bullets than to induce 
them to defend themselves against assailants, 
and is obtained exclusively by movements in 
mass. 

But this rule, taking no account of the 
courage of the troops, is always relative and 
defective, and particularly so in popular wars, 
when it is always contradictory to the truth, 
because then the increased or diminished cour- 
age of the troops is most freely manifested. 

So the French, in 181 2, in beating a retreat, 
should, according to tactics, have defended 



126 NAPOLEON'S 

themselves separately; 'but, as a matter of 
fact, they drew more closely together, for the 
spirit of the troops had fallen so low that 
it could only be maintained by the men in 
mass. 

^^he Russians, on the contrary, ought, ac- 
cording to tactics, to have attacked in mass; 
but the fact is that they scattered their forces, 
because the spirit of their troops had reached 
such a point that isolated men attacked the 
enemy without waiting for a command, and 
had no need of encouragement or constraint 
to induce them to expose themselves to the 
fatigues and the perils of war. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, 



127 



XIV. 

THE FLIGHT OF NAPOLEON. 

When freezing weather began, on November 
8, the French retreat suddenly assumed a 
more tragic character. Men were frozen on 
the march, and others, seeking to warm their 
stiffened limbs at the bivouac fires, were liter- 
ally roasted to death ; and, close by, the em- 
peror and his retinue of kings and dukes 
rode along in carriages, wrapped in their furs, 
and bearing the treasures they had stolen. 
But the truth is that nothing could hasten 
or restrain the progress of flight or the de- 
composition of the French army after its 
egress from Moscow. 

Without taking account of the Guard, 
which throughout the entire campaign gave 
itself over to pillage, we find that during 
the movement from the capital to Viasma the 
seventy-three thousand men of the French 
army were reduced to thirty-six thousand, and, 



128 NAPOLEON'S 

of the number lost, only five thousand fell in 
battle. 

This is the first term in a progression which 
indicates with mathematical precision the terms 
that are to follow. 

The French army was destroyed and melted 
away in the same proportion from Moscow to 
Viasma, from Viasma to Smolensk, from Smo- 
lensk to Beresina, and from Beresina to Yilna, 
independently of the varying degree of cold, 
the pursuit of the enemy on its path, and of 
all other circumstances. 

After Viasma, the French troops drew to- 
gether in a single mass, and so continued to 
the end. 

Although we know how far from the truth 
are reports made by generals on the condition 
of their troops, we read not without interest 
what Berthier wrote, at this time, to the em- 
peror : — 

ir~^\ think I ought to acquamt Your Majesty with the condi- 
tion of the troops in the different army corps that have during 
the last two or three days come under my inspection. They 
are nearly disbanded. The number of soldiers following the 
standards is, at the most, less than a fourth in nearly all the 
regiments ; the others go by themselves in different directions, 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



129 



in the hope of finding provisions and to escape from disci- 
pline. The majority of them look to Smolensk as the place 
where they will recruit from their sufferings. During the last 
few days, we have noticed many soldiers throwing away their 
muskets and cartridges. In this condition of things, the inter- 
ests of Your Majesty's service require '^that, whatever our ulti- 
mate plans, the army should be rallied at Smolensk, and the 
ranks rid of non-combatants, of unmounted men, of useless 
baggage, and of such artillery stores as are no longer actually 
needed. Moreover, the soldiers require some days of rest and 
supplies of adequate food, for they are worn out by fatigue and 
hunger ; many in the last few days have died on the march or 
in bivouac. As this state of things is constantly growing worse, 
we begin to fear that, if remedies are not promptly applied, 
we shall not be able to control the troops in case of battle. — 
November 9, at thirty verstsfrom Smolensk.^'' 

'■ The French rushed into Smolensk, which 
was to them like the promised land, fought 
with one another for food, pillaged their own 
stores, and when they had plundered every- 
thing within their reach, they hurried on. 

They all fled, not knowing whither or why ; 
and Napoleon, with all his genius, knew less 
than others why they did so, for he was the 
only one who fled without having received from 
another a command to fly. 

During the disordered retreat, he and his 
underlings retain their former habits. They 



I30 NAPOLEON'S 

write orders and reports, and they shower titles 
upon one another, — Sire, My Cousin, Prince 
of Eckmiihl, King of Naples, etc. But these 
orders exist only on paper ; no one carries 
them out, because they are no longer possible. 
Napoleon and his family may continue to 
address each other as Majesty, Highness, 
and Cousin ; they feel none the less that they 
are miserable wretches, who have done an im- 
mense amount of harm, and that their expiation 
has begun. And, pretending to be very solici- 
tous about the army, they think only of their 
own skins, each making all possible efforts to 
save his own little person.^ 

^--The conduct of the Russian and French 
troops during the retreat of the " Grand Army " 
from Moscow to the Niemen reminds one of 
the game of blind-man's-buff. Both players 
have their eyes bandaged, and one of them is 
provided with a bell, which he sounds from 
time to time, to attract the attention of his ad- 
versary. At first, the one who is to be caught 
sounds his bell without fear, but when he feels 
that the pursuer is pressing him closely, he 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j^i 

seeks to evade his adversary by taking to his 
heels, and yet, at the moment when he thinks 
he is safe, he runs directly into the arms of his 
pursuer. 

At the beginning of the campaign, Napo- 
leon's troops, while on the road to Kalouga in 
the first period of their retrograde movement, 
give still some signs of life ; but once on the 
road to Smolensk, they seize the clapper of 
the bell in their hands, and run with all their 
speed, and, believing that they are making 
good their escape from the Russian troops, 
throw themselves directly in the way of the 
enemy. , 

._The wild speed of French and Russians was 
too much for the horses, so that reconnaissance 
by cavalry, the best method of ascertaining 
the position of an enemy, became impossible. 
Moreover, the changes of position in both 
armies were so numerous and rapid that infor- 
mation always came too late. 
..-' News came on a certain day that the ene- 
my's army was the night before at such and 
such a place, and on the morrow, by the time 
that anything could be done, they found that 



132 NAPOLEON'S 

the army had already made a two-days march 
and had taken another position. 

One army fled and the other followed. On 
leaving Smolensk, the French troops had a 
number of routes to choose from. It seems as 
if Napoleon and his generals, having made a 
four-days halt, might have occupied the time 
profitably by reconnoitring the enemy, and 
adopting different tactics. But, instead of this, 
after the four-days rest, the army moved on 
in mass, turning neither to the right nor to 
the left, but without reflection following their 
former route, the worst that was accessible, 
that of Krasnoe and Orsha. 

Thinking always that the enemy was at their 
heels and not before them, the French has- 
tened on, spreading out and dispersing their 
forces, so that some were often twenty-four 
hours march from the others. 
'""^At the head of the whole army ran the em- 
peror ; after him came the kings, and then the 
dukes.,->.> 

The Russian army, believing that Napoleon 
would take the only reasonable route and turn 
to the right toward the Dnieper, themselves 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 13^ 

turned to the right, and followed the main road 
in the direction of Krasnoe. 

At this point in the game of blind-man's-buff, 
the French ran against the Russian advance 
guard. 

Having thus unexpectedly discovered the 
enemy, they were confused, and paused an in- 
stant in astonishment and fright, only to resume 
their course, abandoning their comrades in the 
rear. There, for three days, the isolated frag- 
ments of the French army ran the gauntlet of 
the Russian troops ; first came the corps of the 
viceroy, then that of Davoust, finally that of Ney.l 
^- They abandoned their comrades, they aban- 
doned half of their forces in their flight, lying 
hid by day, and marching by night in a thou- 
sand detours and semicircles. 

.'Ney, who came last, because he had stopped 
to blow up the unoffending walls of Smolensk, 
rejoined Napoleon at Orsha with one thousand 
men out of the ten thousand who had been 
under his command. Abandoning a part of his 
soldiers and his artillery, he had succeeded in 
slipping through the woods by night and in 
crossing the Dnieper. 



134 NAPOLEON'S 

From Orsha they hastened on toward Vilna, 
still playing the game of blind-man's-buff with 
the pursuing enemy. 

At Beresina the confusion increased. A great 
many men were drowned, others gave them- 
selves up ; but those who crossed the river still 
hastened on. 

'■ Napoleon, wrapped up in his furs, passed in 
a sledge, and, abandoning his companions in 
arms, escaped with all possible haste. ,^ 

Those of his generals who could do so fol- 
lowed his example ; those who could not, sur- 
rendered or perished by the way. 

-"During this period of the Russian campaign 
the leaders of the French army did everything 
that was possible to destroy their troops. As 
we follow the movement of this mass of men 
from the beginning of its march to Kalouga to 
the flight of Napoleon, we can find no indica- 
tion of wisdom in the conduct of the army, — 
and it would seem that historians who make 
the action of the masses depend upon the will 
of a single man ought not to try to write the 
history of this campaign in any such way. 



RUSSIAN campaign: 



135 



And yet they do. Historians without num- 
ber have gravely discussed, in mountains of 
print, the plans and dispositions adopted by 
Napoleon in this campaign, and find them to 
be immeasurably profound ; they are in ecsta- 
sies over the manoeuvres executed by the troops, 
and the genius manifested in the measures 
adopted by the marshals. 

The retreat by Malo-Yaroslavetz, — that use- 
less retreat by a devastated route, chosen by 
Napoleon when he might have taken another 
that would have led him into provinces where 
provisions were abundant, the route for which 
he neglected the parallel road followed later by 
the pursuing Koutouzof, — this retreat has found 
defenders, who vindicate it on the plea of superior 
tactics ; and these same superior tactics ought 
to explain the retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. 

But the historians of Napoleon are not satis- 
fied with vindicating their hero. They vaunt 
his bravery in putting himself at the head of his 
troops at Krasnoe, where he intended to give 
battle. They represent him marching on foot 
at the head of his army, with a cane in his 
hand, and saying : — 



136 



NAPOLEON'S 



" Enough of the emperor ; it is time for the 
general." 

In spite of these fantastic stories, we find 
that he fled instead of fighting, leaving behind 
him the defenceless fragments of his army.-\^^^' 

Sometimes the historians are pleased to 
exalt the grandeur of soul displayed by the 
marshals, particularly by Ney, who, in the 
grandeur of his soul, succeeded in getting 
through the forest by night, passing the Dnie- 
per, and finally entering Orsha without colors, 
without artillery, and leaving behind him nine- 
tenths of his army. 

^Finally, when the great emperor himself 
abandons his army, historians represent the act 
as something grand, a stroke of genius. This 
miserable flight, which we simple mortals look 
upon as a most scurvy act, which we teach our 
children to consider a shameful deed, this vile 
trick historians find means to justify. 

For when their attenuated thread of logic 
will bear no more stretching, when the actions 
of their hero are in flagrant contradiction with 
what humanity calls good and right, the histo- 
rians take refuge in the idea of greatness. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. jo^ 

With them greatness excludes all idea of good 
and evil. In him who is great, nothing is bad. 
He who is proclaimed great is acquitted of all 
the atrocities that he may have committed. 

** He is great ! " cry the historians ; and 
there is no more good or evil, there is only 
what is ''great" and what is not ''great." 

What is " great " is good, what is not is bad. 

" Greatness" is with them the quality of cer- 
tain beings set apart, whom they call heroes. 

And Napoleon, fleeing to his own fireside, 
warmly wrapped in his furs, and leaving behind 
his companions in arms and that multitude 
of men whom he had led into Russia, feels that 
he has done something great, and his soul is 
tranquil. 

** There is only one step," he himself said, 
*'from the sublime" (he thinks himself sub- 
lime !) " to the ridiculous." And for fifty years 
the universe has cried after him, " Sublime ! 
Great ! Napoleon the Great ! " Truly, there is 
only one step from the sublime to the ridicu- 
lous ! 

/^They do not see that by taking greatness as 
the standard of good and evil they thereby 



1 28 NAPOLEON'S 

declare the emptiness and littleness of what 
they call great. 

( For us there is no greatness where there is 
not simplicity or goodness or justice. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j^g 



XV. 

PURSUING THE FRENCH. 

,^ Where is the Russian who, reading the story 
of the last period of the campaign of 1812, has 
not experienced a profound feeling of vexation, 
discontent, and perplexity.? 

Who has not asked himself why we did not 
destroy or capture all the French, when they 
were surrounded by our three greater Russian 
armies ; when, dying of hunger, they surren- 
dered in crowds ; and when, as history tells us, 
the proper aim of the Russians was to cut off 
the retreat of the French, to stop them, and to 
take them prisoners ? 

Why, if the proper object of this army, — 
which at first, less in number, fought the battle 
of Borodino and then surrounded the French 
on three sides, — if the true .object of this 
army was to cut off the retreat of the PVench 
and take them prisoners, why did it not achieve 
the end in view } 



I40 



NAPOLEON'S 



Were the French so superior to the Rus- 
sians that the latter, after having surrounded 
their enemy, considered themselves unequal to 
the conquest ? 

If such was the aim of the Russians, how was 
it that their plans miscarried ? 

History — or what is called history — replies 
to these questions by declaring that Russia did 
not attain the object in question because Kou- 
touzof, Tormasof, Tchitchagof, and others did 
not execute such and such a manoeuvre. 

But why were not these manoeuvres exe- 
cuted ? If it was the fault of these generals 
that the end in view was not attained, why 
were they not court-martialled and put to 
death ? 

But even if we were to admit that Koutouzof 
and Tchitchagof were the cause of Russian 
*' unsuccess," we should still find it impossible 
to understand why our troops, who were in 
superior force at Krasnoe and Beresina, did not 
disarm the French troops and seize the mar- 
shals, the kings, and the emperor, if such was 
the object of the Russians. We cannot 
explain this strange phenomenon — as do the 



I^USS/AN CAMPAIGN. j^j 

majority of military Russians — by saying that 
it was because Koutouzof forbade our troops 
from taking the offensive. Such reasons we 
know to be specious, for we have seen that 
Koutouzof was unable to restrain the troops 
either at Viasma or at Taroutino. 

If the object of the Russians was truly to cut 
off the retreat of the French army and to take 
Napoleon and his marshals captives, — since 
this object was not attained, and since all 
attempts in that direction were shameful fail- 
ures, — the French were right in representing 
the last period of the campaign as a series of 
victories, and Russian historians are wrong 
when they claim that we were victorious. 

Russian military historians are, in spite of 
their lyrical outbursts in regard to the courage 
and patriotism of their countrymen, logically 
forced to the conclusion that the retreat from 
Moscow was for Napoleon a series of victo- 
ries, and for Koutouzof a series of defeats. 

But, if I put aside national pride, I discover 
that this conclusion involves a contradiction, 
for this series of victories on the part of Napo- 
leon led the French to complete destruction,-. 



142 NAPOLEON'S 

and the series of defeats endured by Koutouzof 
led the Russians to the overthrow of the 
enemy and the elutriation of their territory. 

The source of this contradiction lies in the 
fact that historians study events in the corre- 
spondence of kings and generals, and by means 
of official narratives and reports, and they have 
assumed that the object of the last period in 
the campaign of 1812 was to cut off the retreat 
of the French and to seize Napoleon and his 
marshals. 

This object did not exist at all, and could not 
exist, because it would have been foolish, and 
it would have been impossible of attainment. 
^^ The object would have been foolish, in the 
first place, because Napoleon's defeated army 
was flying from Russian territory with all pos- 
sible speed, and thereby fulfilling the wishes of 
all Russians. Why direct military operations 
against an enemy who is running away as fast 
as he can go } 

Secondly, it would have been foolish to try 
to stop men who were employing all their 
energy in the effort to get away with all pos- 
sible celerity. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



143 



Thirdly, it would have been foolish to sacri- 
fice men in fighting an enemy who was destroy- 
ing himself by contact with external causes, 
and that at such a rate that even with an open 
road the French could carry to the frontiers 
only the small number that remained to them 
in the month of December — a hundredth part 
of all their forces. 

Fourthly, it would have been foolish to make 
prisoners of the emperor, the kings, and the 
marshals, for their captivity would have been 
exceedingly embarrassing to the Russians, as 
De Maistre and other able diplomatists of the 
time clearly recognized. 

It would have been still more foolish to cap- 
ture whole regiments of Frenchmen, when the 
Russian army had been depleted one-half by 
the time it got to Krasnoe, and entire divisions 
would have been needed to guard the prison- 
ers. How could they have cared for prisoners 
when the Russian soldiers were not receiving 
full rations and when the French were dying of 
cold and hunger } 

This profound plan of seizing Napoleon and 
his army reminds one of the gardener who, 



144 NAPOLEON'S 

instead of driving away the animal that was 
ravaging his borders, ran behind the gate to 
crush it when it passed out. The only thing 
one can say in his favor is that he was no 
longer master of himself in his wrath. Not 
even this excuse can be made for those who 
devised the plan of seizing Napoleon and his 
staff, for they were not the ones who had to 
bear the damage done to the ravaged borders. 
^^The idea of cutting off the retreat of Na- 
poleon and his army was not only foolish — 
it was impossible. 

First, because, as experience shows, the 
movement of columns of soldiers in battle 
for a distance of thirty miles can never be 
made in accordance with a prearranged plan. 
It was more than improbable, it was impos- 
sible, that Generals Tchitchagof, Koutouzof, 
and Wittgenstein should effect a junction at 
a certain place at a certain time. Koutouzof 
understood this, and, when this plan of action 
was submitted to him, he objected that oper- 
ations at great distances never gave the an- 
ticipated results. 

Secondly, to overcome the momentum of Na- 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



145 



poleon's army in its homeward flight, forces 
much greater than those possessed by Russia 
would have been necessary. 

Thirdly, we use a foolish military phrase 
when we speak of " cutting off " an enemy. 
We may cut off a piece of bread, but not 
an army. 

To cut off an army, to bar its road, is an 
impossible thing, for there are always chances 
for detours, and it is favored by night and 
obscurity, as military strategists may convince 
themselves if they will study what took place 
at Krasnoe and Beresina. 

It is no more possible to seize a person who 
will not be seized than it is to seize a swallow 
unless it comes and lights upon your hand. 
,--^ Armies can be made prisoners only when 
they do as the German army did, and surrender 
according to the rules of strategy and tactics. 
The French troops did not adopt this plan, for 
death by cold and hunger awaited them alike 
in flight and in captivity. 

Fourthly, — and this is the most important 
consideration of all, — never since the world 
began was a war carried on under more terri- 



146 NAPOLEON'S 

ble conditions than those which attended the 
campaign of 181 2; and the Russian troops, by 
concentrating their efforts for the pursuit of 
the French, could do nothing more unless they 
incurred the penalty of annihilation. 

During the movement of the Russians from 
Taroutino to Krasnoe, fifty thousand men, 
equivalent to half the population of an ordi- 
nary city, left the ranks — some sick, others 
disabled. 

The Russian army, in this manner, lost half 
of its men without giving battle. 
,,-^How have the historians described this 
period of the campaign, when the soldiers, 
without boots or great-coats, with insufificient 
food, and deprived of brandy, passed the nights 
in the snow, in a temperature fifteen degrees 
below freezing.-* The days then were only 
seven or eight hours long, and in the dark- 
ness that intervened discipline was impossible. 
In this way, men passed whole months be- 
tween life and death, fighting against cold 
and hunger, not for a few hours, but inces- 
santly, enduring privations so bitter that half 
of the army melted away in a single month. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. i^y 

And yet this is the period of the campaign 
that historians pretend to describe when they 
tell us how Miloradovitch ought to have made 
a flank movement i^i one direction, and Tor- 
masof in another, and Tchitchagof in a third 
(the snow being knee-deep), and how such and 
such a general once cut off and destroyed an 
enemy's army ! — and so on, and so on. 
^ The Russians, of whom one-half had per- 
ished in the snow, accomplished all that they 
could or ought to do to attain an end worthy 
of the Russian people. It is not their fault 
if other Russians, with idle hands, in comforta- 
bly heated apartments, devised plans that could 
not be carried -out?^ 

All the strange contradictions between the 
historical facts and the account of the event 
as recorded in history, incomprehensible as 
they are to-day, arise simply from this : the 
historians who have told the story have given 
us, instead of facts, fine sentiments and the 
fine speeches of different generals. ) 

To them, the most important incidents in 
this part of the campaign are the speeches of 
Miloradovitch, the plans of some other general, 



148 NAPOLEON'S 

and the decoration of another ; for the fifty 
thousand Russian soldiers who were left be- 
hind in hospitals, or who perished in the snow, 
historians feel no interest; the subject is out- 
side of their jurisdiction. 

And yet if the historians will only turn their 
attention to the reports and plans of the gen- 
erals, they will be able to follow the move- 
ments of the hundred thousand soldiers who 
took an active part in what was going on, and 
all the questions that have troubled them so 
much will be solved at once. 

The idea of cutting off the retreat of Napo- 
leon and his army had no existence except in 
the imaginations of a dozen plan-makers. The 
idea could not be taken seriously, because it 
was as absurd as it was impracticable. 

The Russian people had only one object in 
view, and that was to rid their soil of the 
invaders."^ — 

The object was attained, firstly, because the 
French abandoned Russia of their own accord, 
and it was only necessary that their flight 
should not be checked ; secondly, because of 
the guerilla warfare, which decimated the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j^q 

French army ; and, thirdly, because the greater 
part of the Russian army followed the enemy 
step by step, ready to resort to force if the 
French had suspended their flight. 

The action of the Russian army was like the 
crack of a whip behind an anim.al already under 
full headway. 

An experienced cattle-driver knows that the 
most efficacious method of hastening the speed 
of an animal is to threaten it with upraised 
whip, but not to strike. 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



151 



XVI. 

KOUTOUZOF. 

After the encounter at Viasma, which took 
place because Koutouzof could no longer 
restrain the impetuosity of his troops, who 
wished at any- price to " sweep away," to '' cut 
off," to "hold back," the French army, the 
subsequent retreat to Krasnoe, during which 
time the French had the Russians at their 
heels, took place without the occurrence of a 
battle. The progress of the French was so 
rapid that the Russians could not keep up 
with them, and lost them from view ; their 
horses in the cavalry and artillery were 
unequal to the advance, and they were only 
imperfectly informed in regard to the move- 
ments of the enemy. The Russian soldiers, 
worn out by daily marches of forty versts, 
could no longer press onward. 
. To understand what this army endured from 
fatigue, we have only to remember that the 



152 NAPOLEON'S 

Russian army, on leaving Taroutino, numbered 
one hundred thousand men, and that although 
they lost, aside from a hundred or so taken 
prisoners, not more than five thousand in 
killed and wounded, they had only fifty thou- 
sand men when they got to Krasnoe. 

The breathless pursuit of the Russian army 
was as disastrous on the one hand as was the 
precipitous retreat of the French army on the 
other. The only difference in their respective 
conditions was that the Russian troops 
marched at will without being exposed to 
attack ; the French troops advanced under a 
menace of certain destruction, knowing that 
their sick would fall into the hands of the 
enemy; while the Russians who could no 
longer endure the fatigue of the campaign 
were able to return to their homes. 

The principal cause of the diminution of the 
French army was the rapidity of its flight, as 
we see by comparing its losses with those of 
the Russian army launched in pursuit. 

Koutouzof restricted his efforts, as he had 
done at Taroutino and Viasma, to the preven- 
tion of any interference with the destructive 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN, 



153 



progress of the French, although this was con- 
trary to directions from St. Petersburg and the 
opinion of his own generals. His only desire 
was to facilitate the course that the enemy had 
chosen, and to make the march of his own 
troops as easy as possible. 

Moreover, when Koutouzof saw the signs of 
fatigue manifested by his army, and the losses 
it had undergone, he found another reason for 
slackening his pursuit of the enemy and wait- 
ing to see what would happen. They did not 
know what route would be taken by the 
French, who made greater speed the more 
closely they were pressed by the Russian sol- 
diers. Only by following at a distance could 
the Russians avoid the zigzags of the enemy 
and pursue them by the most direct road. 

The intricate manoeuvres proposed by the 
other generals involved an increase in the daily 
marches, while the only reasonable course to 
pursue was to reduce the marches as much as 
possible. 

Toward this latter object all the efforts of 
Koutouzof were directed from Moscow to 
Vilna ; the pursuit was not to him a matter of 



154 



NAPOLEON'S 



accident or caprice, but he maintained it with a 
persistency and perseverance that did not for 
a moment relax. 

These tactics were dictated to Koutouzof, 
not by science and reason, but by his heart. 
That truly Russian heart knew and felt what 
every Russian soldier knew and felt, that the 
French were vanquished, and that, to be rid of 
them forever, it was only necessary to provide 
them with an escort to the ^'frontier ; and at 
the same time he felt with his soldiers the 
grievous weight of a campaign made terrible 
by the rapidity of the marches and the inten- 
sity of the cold. 

But the other generals, principally those 
who were not Russian at all, wanted to dis- 
tinguish themselves, to astonish the world, to 
take a king prisoner, or at least a duke ; their 
only idea was to give battle and conquer, 
although a battle would have been odious and 
absurd. 

'^v-^When they brought their plans for battles 
to Koutouzof, he looked at his soldiers, fam- 
ished, without shoes, without great-coats, who 
had been for a month without fires, reduced 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 155 

to half their former numbers, and with whom 
he must pursue the enemy a distance greater 
than that already traversed, to the frontier, — 
Koutouzof saw this, and his reply to the gen- 
erals who wanted to distinguish themselves 
was simply a shrug of the shoulders. 

The desire to display bravery, to direct ma- 
noeuvres, to harass the enemy, was especially 
manifested when the Russian troops encoun- 
tered a detachment of the French army. That 
was the case at Krasnoe, where the Russian 
generals, believing themselves confronted by 
two or three columns of the French army, 
hurled themselves upon Napoleon and his six- 
teen thousand^ men. 

In spite of Koutouzof s efforts to avoid this 
engagement and to save his troops, the Rus- 
sians for three days kept up an indiscriminate 
attack on the French stragglers. 

Colonel Toll, a German, prepared a plan, in 
which he says, " die erste Colonne marschirt^ the 
first column will march, etc." . And, as always 
happens, everything went on contrary to the 
plan. 

Prince Eugene of Wiirtemberg saw from a 



1^5 NAPOLEON'S 

hill-top a number of French on the road, and 
asked for re-enforcements, which did not arrive. 
That niofht the French turned the Russian 
position, scattered through the woods, and re- 
sumed their march as best they could. 

General Miloradovitch, who declared that he 
had nothing to do with the provisioning of his 
troops, and that he cared nothing whatever 
about it, who could never be found when he 
was wanted, who called himself a " chevalier 
without fear and without reproach," had a 
weakness for French conversation, and was 
always talking with the French, proposing 
terms of surrender, and so losing a great 
deal of time without executing the orders 
intrusted to him. 

" I make you a present of that column, 
my children," he said to his troops, pointing 
to the French. * 

And his troops, mounted upon worn-out 
horses, urged their steeds with sptir and 
sword-thrusts into a slow trot, and advanced 
upon the column which the general had 
given them. It was composed of a crowd of 
poor Frenchmen already half -dead with hunger 



RUSS/AA^ CAMPAIGN-. 



157 



and cold. This column, whose destiny had 
been so generously disposed of, threw down 
its arms and surrendered, a consummation 
which it long had wished. 

At Krasnoe, these generals took twenty-one 
thousand Frenchmen prisoners, and captured 
hundreds of cannon and a baton which they 
called ''the marshal's baton." They passed 
the time in a discussion as to who had dis- 
tinguished himself the most, and "they were 
entirely contented with themselves. 

Their only regret was that they had not 
succeeded in seizing Napoleon, or at least one 
of the marshals, and they reproached one 
another about it, and complained of it to 
Koutouzof. 

These men, carried away by their passions, 
were only the agents of sad necessity, but 
they believed themselves to be heroes, and 
imagined that they had accomplished a most 
noble and worthy work. 

They blamed Koutouzof for having pre- 
vented them, since the beginning of the cam- 
paign, from vanquishing Napoleon, and for 
thinking only of his own personal predilec- 



158 



NAPOLEON'S 



tions, and they added that he refused to leave 
Polotniani Zavodi because he was contented 
with his position there. Finally, they main- 
tained that he had stopped the movements 
of the troops at Krasnoe because he had lost 
his head in the presence of Napoleon, even 
going so far as to accuse him of an under- 
standing with Napoleon, of allowing himself 
to be bought over, etc.^ 

Koutouzof was not only condemned by prej- 
udiced contemporaries, but posterity and his- 
tory, which proclaim Napoleon " great," see 
in Koutouzof only an old, weak, cunning, and 
debauched courtier ; thus is he regarded by 
foreigners, while Russians look upon him as an 
indefinite sort of person, a marionette, who was 
useful only because he bore a Russian name. 

In 1812-1813, Koutouzof was openly accused 
of having made serious mistakes. 

Alexander I. was displeased with him, and 
in the history of the campaign recently written 
by imperial order,^ Koutouzof is represented 

1 Wilson's Memoir. 

2 History of 1812, by Bogdanovitch ; accounts of Koutou- 
zof, and dissertation on the insufficient results attained at the 
battle of Krasnoe. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. i^g 

as a lying and crafty courtier, who trembled 
at the very name of Napoleon, and who, by 
the errors he committed at Krasnoe and Bere- 
sina, deprived the Russian arms of a complete 
victory over the French. 

Such is the fate of mortals who are not great 
men, — or, as the Russian mind never recog- 
nizes great men, let us say that such is the 
fate of those rare and nearly always isolated 
souls who are able to penetrate the designs of 
Providence and subordinate their own wills. \^ 

The hatred and scorn of the multitude is the 
punishment these men have to endure for their 
ability to understand superior laws. 

To Russian- historians (what a strange and 
horrible thing to say !), (Napoleon, that vile in- 
strument of history, who never anywhere, not 
even in exile, displayed the dignity of man- 
hood, —this man is the object of admiration 
and enthusiasm : he is great \ j 
^^Koutouzof, the man who from the beginning 
to the end of the campaign of 1812, from Boro- 
dino to Vilna, did not once, by a single act or 
a single word, deviate from his plan, but who 
presented one of the rarest examples of self- 



l6o NAPOLEON'S 

sacrifice and insight, — Koutouzof is nothing to 
the Russian historians, and when they speak 
of him, and of the great affairs of the year 
1812, they are ashamed. 

.And yet it would be difficult to call to 
mind a historical personage whose activity 
has been so faithfully and so constantly de- 
voted to a lofty aim — an aim which expressed 
all the aspirations of a people. > 

It would be equally difficult to discover in 
history another example of an object so com- 
pletely realized as was that to which Kou- 
touzof entirely devoted himself in 181 2. 
.^Koutouzof never talked about the forty cen- 
turies that looked down from the summit of 
the Pyramids ; he never spoke of the sacrifices 
he had made for his country, of the great 
things that he would accomplish or of those 
he had already done. 

He never spoke of himself, never attempted 
to play a part, was careful to be like everybody 
else, to be always natural in his manners, and 
to say only the most simple and the most 
ordinary things. 

He wrote letters to his daughters and to 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. i5i 

Madame De Stael, read romances, enjoyed 
the society of beautiful women, and was on 
familiar terms with generals, officers, and sol- 
diers. He never contradicted anybody who 
tried to convince him of anything. 

When Count Rostoptchin rode with all speed 
across the Zhaousa bridge to join Koutouzof, 
and reproached him with the loss of Moscow, 
adding, — 

" And yet you promised not to surrender 
Moscow without a battle," 

Koutouzof, knowing that Moscow was already 
abandoned, replied : — 

" I shall not give up Moscow without a 
battle." 

When Count Araktshief, directed by the 
tsar, came to tell him that General Ermolof 
must be appointed commander-in-chief of the 
artillery, Koutouzof, although he had a few 
moments before declared himself against the 
appointment, replied : — 

'* I was about to propose it myself." 

What mattered to him, to him who alone 
of all the foolish crowd about him understood 
the grandeur of events, what mattered to him 



1 52 NAPOLEON'S 

the reproaches of Rostoptchin, or the ques- 
tion as to who should be named chief of 
artillery ? 

Not only in circumstances similar to those 
that I have mentioned, but on all occasions, 
this old man, who by experience of life had 
learned with certainty that the thoughts and 
words of men are not related to their actions, 
spoke without meaning, saying whatever came 
into his head. 

But this same man, who made light of 
speech on such occasions, did not, through- 
out the whole campaign, utter a word at 
variance with the object toward which he 
so resolutely moved. 

It is evident that not wilfulness but a pain- 
ful assurance that he would not be understood 
led him many times in different circumstances 
to conceal his thoughts. 

^.^After the battle of Borodino, when the mis- 
understanding between him and his staff be- 
gan, he alone declared that Borodino was a 
victory, and he repeated it many times orally 
and in his letters, as well as in his reports, 
up to the time of his death. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. jg^ 

He also was the only one to declare that 
, the loss of Moscow was not the loss of Russia. 

He it was who, in reply to Lauriston, sent 
by Napoleon to offer terms of peace, said that 
he could not make peace, because the Russian 
people did not wish it. 

^ He alone, during the retreat of the French, 
declared that all military operatiojis were tcse- 
less, that the affair zvonld take care of itself in 
accordance with the wishes of the Russians^ that 
it was only necessary to facilitate the progress 
of the enemy, that neither the battle of Tarou- 
tino nor that of Krasnoe nor that of Viasma 
was necessary, that they must spare their men if 
they wished to reach the frontier with any troops, 
and finally that he would not sacrifice the life of 
a single Russian soldier even to make ten pris- 
oners. 

And it was he, the man who is represented 
as a deceitful courtier, who at Vilna said to 
the tsar, at the risk of disgrace, that to continue 
the war beyond the frontier would be useless 
and dangerotLs. 

But words alone would not prove sufficiently 
that he grasped the full progress of events. 



164 NAPOLEON'S 

All his acts, all his deeds, all his achievements 
tended to one object, from which he was not 
for one moment turned aside, and which he 
sought to obtain by three methods : — 

1. Concentrating all his forces in view of an 
encounter with the French. 

2. Vanquishing them. 

3. Driving them from Russia while incurring 
the least possible suffering on the part of the 
Russian troops and the Russian people. 

It was Koutouzof the temporizer, the man 
whose device was "patience and plenty of 
time," who gave battle at Borodino, and who 
made the preparations for that battle with 
unexampled solemnity. 

It was Koutouzof who, before hostilities 
began at Austerlitz, declared that the battle 
was lost ; and concerning Borodino, where all 
the generals acknowledged defeat, protested, 
up to the time of his death, that the battle 
had been won by the Russians, although a 
victory followed by retreat had never before 
been known to history. 

Finally, as we have seen, he was the only 
one during the retreat who declared that any 



KUSSIAIV CAMPAIGN. 



165 



more battles were useless, and who opposed 
the idea of crossing the frontier to begin a 
new war. 

If we no longer confound the wishes of 
the masses with plans fermenting in the 
heads of a dozen ambitious upstarts, we shall 
be able distinctly to see the great event which 
is now in all its completeness spread before 
our eyes. 

, How was it that this old man, alone against 
many, divined with so much perspicacity the 
national import of events, and did not once 
contradict himself throughout the whole cam- 
paign ? 

This power of insight had its source in 
the sentiment of the Russian people, which 
was carried by Koutouzof in his heart with 
undiminished purity and vigor. 

And because the Russian people recognized 
this sentiment in Koutouzof, they chose the 
old man, disgraced as he was at court, to be 
the leader in the national war, chose him 
against the will of the tsar. 

This sentiment, and nothing else, elevated 
Koutouzof to the height of human feeling, 



1 66 NAPOLEON'S 

and led him, the general in command, to 
employ all his efforts, not to kill and exter- 
minate men, but to cherish and save them. 

This simple, modest, and therefore truly 
grand figure was not cast in the ready-made 
fictitious mould employed by history for the 
manufacture of European heroes. 

To the valet he is not a great man ; the 
valet has his own conception of greatness-. ~-v 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. i^y 



XVII. 
BERESINA. 

/"-•The French troops melted away in a regular 
mathematical progression. 

The passage of the Beresina, concerning 
which so many volumes have been written, 
was only one of the intermediate steps in the 
annihilation of the French army, and not a 
decisive episode of the campaign. 

Much has been written and much will be 
written about -the passage of the Beresina, 
because all the single misfortunes which the 
French army had up to that time endured 
now accumulated into a mass, and fell upon 
>them as the bridges broke beneath their feet, 
leaving in the memory of those who looked 
on an ineffaceable impression of tragic dis- 
aster. 

The Russians have written volumes about 
the passage of the Beresina, because Pfiihl 
drew up at St. Petersburg (at that distance 



1 68 NAPOLEON'S 

from the theatre of war) a plan for drawing 
Napoleon into a strategical snare on that 
river. All are persuaded that everything 
went on conformably to the plan, and they 
maintain that the passage of the Beresina was 
the destruction of the French. 

Now, the consequences of the passage of 
the Beresina were less disastrous to the French 
than was the battle of Krasnoe ; they left 
fewer pieces of artillery and prisoners in the 
hands of the Russians. Statistics prove this 
assertion. 

The passage of the Beresina served only 
to prove beyond all doubt the absurdity of 
the plan for cutting off the retreat of the 
enemy, and vindicated Koutouzofs idea of 
simply pursuing the French. 

The French hurried on with constantly in- 
creasing velocity, concentrating all their ener- 
gies upon flight. They fled like a wounded 
animal, and it was impossible to stop them 
in their course. 

The proof of this is what occurred at the 
bridges, rather than in the arrangements made 
for the passage. 



RUSSIAN campaign: i5q 

When the bridges were destroyed, the whole 
crowd, soldiers without arms, Russian prison- 
ers, women carrying children, all who made 
up the French train, borne on by the force 
of inertia, instead of giving themselves up, 
continued their impetuous course, moving unin- 
terruptedly on, throwing themselves into the 
boats or falling into the icy waters. 

This onward course was reasonable. 

The situation of the fugitives and that of 
the pursuers was equally bad. They press 
close upon one another in their misfortune, 
having confidence in their solidarity, and know- 
ing that each has his place with hi& fellows. 

By surrendering to the Russians, their con- 
dition, instead of being ameliorated, would 
have been made worse as far as food and 
clothing were concerned. 

The French did not need exact information 
to be assured that the Russians did not know 
what to do with their prisoners, of whom more 
than half, in spite of their efforts, had died 
of hunger. The French understood that it 
could not be otherwise. 

The most compassionate generals, those 



1^0 NAPOLEON'S 

best disposed toward the French, the French 
themselves serving in the Russian army, could 
do nothing for the prisoners, who participated 
in the misery endured by the Russians. 

■The Muscovite generals could not take from 
their famished soldiers the bread and clothes 
they needed for the benefit of the French 
prisoners, however inoffensive and even inno- 
cent the latter might be. 

There were, however, some Russian generals 
who favored the prisoners, but they were ex- 
ceptions. 

Behind the French was certain death ; before 
them, hope. They had burned their bridges, 
and their only safety was in flight ; and upon 
this flight they concentrated all their energies. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j^j 



XVIII. 

NAPOLEON AND ALEXANDER L 

If we agree with the historians that great 
men lead humanity toward certain ends, such 
as the greatness of Russia and France, the 
European balance of power, the propagation 
of the ideas of the Revolution, progress in 
general, or any other object, then it is im- 
possible to explain historical events without 
having recourse to the intervention of acci- 
dent or of genius. ^: 

If the European wars at the beginning of 
this century had for their object the great- 
ness of Russia, that end might have been 
attained without the wars and without the 
invasion. 

If, on the contrary, the object in view was 
the greatness of France, there was no need 
of the Revolution or of the ^ Empire. 

If the proposed end was the propagation of 
the ideas of the Revolution, books would have 
accomplished the work better than soldiers. 



J ^2 NAPOLEON'S 

If, lastly, the progress of civilization was 
the object, it is sufficiently, evident that there 
are means for its attainment more efficacious 
than the destruction of men, and pillage. 

Why did events take one course rather 
than another ? History replies : — 

"Accident created the situation and genius 
■ profited by it." 

But what is " accident," and what is the 
meaning of the word "genius".-^ 

" Accident " and " genius " are words which 
do not represent anything that really exists, 
and for this reason it is impossible to define 
them. 

They only express a certain way of looking 
at events. 

I am ignorant of the cause of a fact. I 
believe that I cannot know it, and, accordingly, 
I do not try to discover it ; I say, it is an ac- 
cident. 

I see that a force has produced an action 
incompatible with the ordinary qualities of 
men ; I cannot penetrate to the cause of this 
force, and I cry, it is genius. 

The sheep shut up every night by the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 173 

shepherd in a special enclosure, and given 
extra food till it becomes twice as fat as 
the others, must appear to be a genius to 
the rest of the flock. The fact that the 
sheep, instead of entering the common fold, 
has a place by itself and extra fodder, and, 
once fattened, is delivered to the butcher and 
killed, doubtless impresses the other sheep 
as a result of genius combined with a series 
of extraordinary accidents. 

But if the sheep stop thinking that every- 
thing that goes on is exclusively related to 
their own welfare, if they admit that events 
may follow ends they cannot comprehend, 
they will perceive a unity of action and a 
logical conclusion in the fate of the fattened 

sheep. 

Even if they do not know why it was fat- 
tened, they will understand that nothing that 
happened to the sheep came by chance, and 
they will not be obliged to resort for expla- 
nation either to accident or to genius. 

Only when we renounce the effort to know 
the final end of things, and realize that that 
end is wholly beyond our comprehension, do 



174 



NAPOLEON'S 



we discover in the lives of historical person- 
ages a logical succession of facts, obedient 
to necessity, and then only will be revealed 
to us the cause of the disproportion between 
their acts and the capacities of ordinary men, 
and we shall not be obliged to resort to the 
words accident and genius. 

Thus, if we admit that the object of the 
movements of European peoples is unknown 
to us, that we know only certain facts, such as 
butcheries in France, then in Prussia, in Aus- 
tria, and in Russia, and that the cause of 
these events must lie in the movement of 
the western peoples toward the east, and, in- 
versely, of eastern peoples toward the west, — 
admitting this, we no longer have need of 
finding genius or anything exceptional in the 
character of Napoleon and of Alexander I. ; we 
shall see in these personages only men like 
other men, we shall have no need of explain- 
ing on the score of accident the little events 
that made these personages what they were, 
and it will be evident to us that these little 
events were necessary. 

When we give up our search for final ends, 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. j^c 

we understand that, just as it is impossible 
to find on a plant other flowers and other 
fruits than those which it produces, so is it 
impossible to imagine two historical person- 
ages who, in the place of Alexander I. and 
Napoleon, would have been able, from the 
beginning to the end of their lives, to fulfil 
exactly and in the smallest details the mis- 
sion that devolved upon them. 

The fundamental fact in European events at 
the beginning of this century is the warlike 
movements of peoples in mass, first from west 
to east, and then from east to west. 

This movement begins in the west. That 
the western peoples may have the power to 
push their warlike advance as far as Moscow, 
it was necessary : — 

1. That they concentrate in a warlike mass 
of dimensions sufficient to endure the shock of 
the warlike mass from the east ; 

2. That they renounce all their traditions and 
all their habitudes ; ^ 

3. That they have at their head, to accom- 
plish this bellicose movement, a man who can 
justify himself and justify them for resorting to 



1^5 NAPOLEON'S 

lies, to pillage, and to massacres, to attain their 
end. 

The little primitive nucleus dating from the 
French Revolution, not being large enough, dis- 
perses. Traditions and habitudes are modified, 
a new and more considerable group is formed 
little by little, and with it come new traditions 
and new habitudes. In this environment the 
man who is to take his place at the head of 
the movement and bear all the responsibility 
of the events that follow is prepared for his 
mission. 
^,.^-This man, without principles, without habi- 
tudes, without traditions, without name, who is 
not even a Frenchman, — by what seems at first 
glance a combination of strange and fortuitous 
circumstances, — glides through all the parties 
that divide France, and, taking part with none, 
is placed at the head of all. 

The stupidity of those about him, the weak- 
ness and inanity of his rivals, his own sincer- 
ity in falsehood, and his brilliant and presump- 
tuous egotism, combine to push this man to the 
head of the army. 

The excellent quality of his army in Italy, the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. lyj 

disinclination of the enemy to fight, his confi- 
dence in himself and his puerile effrontery, give 
him military glory. 

A multitude of so-called happy accidents 
meet him everywhere. 

The French authorities look at him askance, 
and their disfavor is useful to him. 

The attempts he makes to open a new career 
fail one after the other; Russia refuses his ser- 
vices, the sultan rejects his offers. 

During the war in Italy he is many times 
within a hair's-breadth of destruction, and al- 
ways escapes by some unforeseen circumstance. 

The Russian troops, the only troops who are 
able to extinguish his glory, because of mani- 
fold diplomatic combinations do not set foot in 
Europe while he is there. 

On his return from Italy he finds the French 
government in a state of dissolution that must 
infallibly end in ruin. Napoleon himself de- 
vises, as an escape from this dangerous situa- 
tion, the foolish and haphazard scheme of an 
expedition to Africa. 

Again chance serves him marvellously. Mal- 
ta, reputed to be impregnable, surrenders be- 



1^8 NAPOLEON'S 

fore a shot is fired. Napoleon's most adventur- 
ous plans are crowned with success. 

The enemy's fleet, which a little later would 
not allow the meanest vessel to pass, does not 
interfere with the passage of his army. 

In Africa, he commits a series of outrages 
upon the almost unarmed inhabitants, and the 
men who unite with him in these atrocities, and 
above all he, their chief, persuade themselves 
that what they do is great and noble, that they 
are winning glory, and that their exploits are 
like those of Caesar and Alexander of Macedon. 

This ideal of glory and greatness, leading those 
who follow it to shrink from no crime and to 
surround all their acts with a halo of the super- 
natural, — the ideal which is to be the guide 
of this man and of all those who join his 
fortunes, — grew to enormous proportions in 
Africa. 

Everything that he undertakes prospers. 
The pestilence spares him. Massacre of pris- 
oners is not imputed to him as a crime. 

His hurried, puerile, erratic departure, dishon- 
orable withal, for he left behind companions in 
arms who were in distress, is accounted to him 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. lyg 

a meritorious act, and again, the second time, 
the English fleet allows him to escape. 

Then dazzled by the crimes he has committed, 
and the satisfaction they have brought him, he 
reaches Paris without any definite object in 
view. The republican government, which a year 
before still had the power to put an end to him, 
is so near dissolution that the presence of this 
man belonging to no party can only end in his 
own supremacy. 

He has no plan, he fears every one ; but par- 
ties see in him their safety, and solicit his sup- 
port. 

^ For it is he, he alone, with that ideal of glory 
■ and greatness built up in Italy and Egypt, with 
his wild adoration of self, his audacity in crime, 
his sincerity in falsehood, who is equal to the 
events which are about to be unfolded. 
^Hq is the man needed to occupy the place 
that waits for him, and so, independently of 
his own will, without any determined plan, 
in spite of hesitations and numerous mistakes, 
he is drawn into a conspiracy which aims at 
the possession of power, and this conspiracy is 
crowned with success. \ 



I So NAPOLEON'S 

He is thrust into a sitting of the Directory. 
Alarmed, he wishes to fly, believing himself 
lost ; he feigns illness, and utters a few foolish 
words that might have been his destruction. 

But the men, once so haughty and deter- 
mined, who then compose the' government of 
France, feel that their game is over. They 
are more disturbed than Napoleon, and they 
say just the contrary of what they should 
have said to retain their power and overthrow 
the usurper. 

Accident or rather millions of accidents give 
him power, and all men, as if by agreement, 
hasten to confirm him in power. 

To accident is due the weakness of charac- 
ter which leads the members of the Directory 
to bow before Napoleon. 

Accident makes the character of Paul I., 
and leads that sovereign to recognize Napo- 
leon's power. 

Accident hatches against Napoleon a plot 
which, instead of destroying, confirms his 
power. 

-^Through accident the Prince of Enghien 
comes into his hands, and is assassinated ; and 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN". i8l 

this act, more than any other, proves to the 
multitude his right, since he possesses the 
might, to rule. 

By accident he gives all his strength to 
an expedition against England ; the enterprise, 
which would have ruined him, is never carried 
out, but he falls upon Mack and the Austrian 
army, and conquers without a battle. 

Accident and genius give him the victory at 
Austerlitz, and, always by accident, all the men 
of all the nations of all Europe (with the excep- 
tion of England, which had no part in the 
events then in progress), all men, in spite of 
their horror at Napoleon's crimes, recognize 
his power and^ his self-assumed title, and regard 
his ideal of glory and greatness as reasonable 
and noble. 

The forces of the west, as if preparing for a 
future movement, increase and solidify, after 
being drawn many times toward the east in 
1805, 1806, 1807, and 1809. 

By 181 1, the group of men fprmed in France 
unites with the peoples of Central Europe and 
forms an enormous mass. 

As this mass increases, the man at their 



1 82 NAPOLEON'S 

head is proportionately strengthened in his 
position. 

During the ten years of preparation for this 
great movement, the man has dominated all 
the sovereigns of Europe. Uncrowned sover- 
eigns have no reasonable ideal to oppose to the 
foolish ideal of greatness and glory invented by 
Napoleon. One after another they submit to 
him, and prove their own insignificance. 

The King of Prussia sends his queen to the 
great man to solicit his good offices ; the Em- 
peror of Austria thinks it will be a favor if the 
great man will take the daughter of the em- 
perors to his bed ; the pope, guardian of popular 
holiness, puts religion under the great man's 
feet. 

Napoleon's part is exacted by his environ- 
ment, which thrusts upon him the responsibil- 
ity for present and future events, and pr-epares 
him for what is to come. 

Every act or crime or stroke of luck he essays 
is received by the world as something heroic. 

When the Germans wish to gratify him, they 
can think of nothing better than celebrations 
in honor of Jena and Auerstadt. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 183 

Greatness is not confined to him ; his ances- 
tors, his brothers, his sons-in-law, his brothers- 
in-law are also great. 

Everything combines to take away his last 
vestige of reason, and to prepare him for his 
terrible career. 

When he is ready, all the forces are also ready. 

The invasion rushes toward the east, and 
comes to an end at Moscow. The capital is 
taken. The Russian army is more thoroughly 
shattered than were those of the enemy from 
Austerlitz to Wagram. 

And now, all of a sudden, in place of the 
accidents that have borne him through a series 
of uninterrupted successes to the predestined 
end, we find in operation an incalculable accu- 
mulation of contrary accidents, such as a cold in 
the head at Borodino, the sparks that set fire to 
Moscow, and the frosts of Russia ; and in place 
of genius we discover an incapacity and base- 
ness hitherto unknown to history. 

The invasion advances backwards, and acci- 
dent, instead of favoring its progress, turns 
, against it. 

Then we behold an inverse movement, from 



184 NAPOLEON'S 

east to west, bearing a close resemblance to 
the preceding movement. 

It also is heralded by premonitory activity in 
1805, 1807, and 1809. As in the former case, a 
new group is formed, increases, and becomes a 
colossal mass. The peoples of central Europe 
rally to this movement, which is apparently 
a repetition of the preceding movement, for 
nothing is wanting to complete the resem- 
blance, neither irresolution midway nor in- 
creased velocity as the end draws near. 

Paris, the goal of this movement, is reached, 
and the government of Napoleon and his army 
is overthrown. 

Napoleon himself no longer represents any- 
thing. His actions inspire pity and disgust. 
A new and incomprehensible accident super- 
venes : the allies hate Napoleon, and regard 
him as the cause of all their misfortunes. 

At this hour, despoiled of his prestige and 
power, accused of crimes and perfidy, he ought 
to have been looked upon, as he had been ten 
years before, or was ten years later, as a bandit, \j 
outside of the law ; but, by a strange accident, 
no one considers him in this light. 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. jgq 

His part is not yet played to the end. The 
man who has been declared to be a bandit, out- 
side the law, is sent to an island two days' dis- 
tance from France, and he is given possession 
of this island; with a guard, and millions in 
treasure paid to him. , God knows why ! 

The uprising of peoples begins to abate. 
The waves fall back, and on the undulations of 
the sea float a few diplomatists, who imagine 
that they have brought about the calm. 

But the sea rises again. The diplomatists 
imagine that their dissensions have invoked the 
storm ; they anticipate another war among their 
sovereigns. The situation is beyond their 
control. 

But the wave, whose approach they feel, does 
not come from the direction toward which they 
are looking. 

It is a return of the old wave from the orie- 
inal point of departure, Paris, the last uprising 
from the west ; an uprising which, all the diplo- 
matists think, will solve all ^diplomatic diffi- 
culties, and put an end to the warlike move- 
ment of the period. 



lg6 NAPOLEON'S 

The man who has devastated France returns 
alone, without soldiers, without a plan. He is 
at the mercy of the guard, but, by a strange 
accident, no one tbuches him. On the con- 
trary, every one runs to him in admiration, and 
receives with acclamations him whom they had 
cursed the day before, and whom they will curse 
again a month later. This man is still needed 
to play his part in the last act. 

The act is ended. The play is over. The 
actor is told to take off his costume and go his 
way. He is needed no longer?) 

(For several years more this man plays by 
himself a pitiable comedy, in solitude at St. 
Helena. He seeks by lies and intrigues to 
justify his actions, when justification is no 
longer necessary. 

He shows clearly to the world what a miser- 
able object it was that men took for a force 
when the invisible hand of Destiny pushed it 
forward. 

The true dispenser of events, having brought 
the drama to an end, takes away the mask from 
the principal actor, and reveals his face, say- 
ing : " See in whom you have believed ! Here 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



187 



he is. You see now that not he, but I, led 
you. 

But, blinded by their prejudices, men have 
long remained ignorant of the truth. ; 

We find a yet more distinct and inevitable 
necessity in the life of Alexander I., who was 
at the head of the counter-movement, from the 
east toward the west. 

What qualities ought a man to possess if he 
would supplant others and be placed at the 
head of this movement ? 

He must have a sentiment of justice, and he 
must take a real interest, an interest free from 
all mischievous designs, in the affairs of Europe. 

He must have a loftier moral character than 
that of any other sovereign of his time. He 
must be gentle and sympathetic. And he must 
be the victim of outrageous assaults on the part 
of Napoleon. 

All these distinctive traits are found in Alex- 
ander T. and have been produced by innumerable 
accidents, or so-called accidents, in his past life. 
Everything contributes to this end — his educa- 
tion, his liberal reforms, the counsellors by whom 



1 88 NAPOLEON'S 

he is surrounded ; we need not include Auster- 
litz, Tilsit, and Erfurt. 

Throughout the duration of the patriotic war, 
this personage is inactive, because he is not 
needed. 

But, as soon as the necessity of a European 
war becomes evident, this personage is found at 
the critical moment in the place assigned to 
him ; he is to rally the peoples of Europe and 
lead them to the end. 

The end is accomplished. After the final 
war of 1815, Alexander has at his disposal the 
greatest resources of power ever accessible to 
man. What use does he make of this power 1 

Alexander L, the pacificator of Europe, the 
man who from his youth had been animated by 
a sincere desire to render his peopl ehappy, and 
who was the first to grant liberal reforms to his 
country, might, we are told, because of his un- 
limited power, have really established the wel- 
fare of his people. What do we see ? 

While Napoleon, in exile, occupied himself 
with lying and puerile plans to show how much 
he would do for the good of humanity if only he 
had the power, Alexander I., who possesses the 



RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 189 

power, having fulfilled bis mission, and feeling 
the hand of God upon him, realizes, as it were, 
at a glance, the nothingness of power, steps 
aside, gives himself into the hands of despicable 
men, himself capable only of uttering: — 

'' ' Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto 
thy name give glory.' I am a man like other 
men. Let me live like a man, that I may think 
of my soul and of God." 

,^^"As the sun or as an atom of the imponderable 
ether forms a sphere complete in itself while still 
only an atom in the great All inaccessible to 
man, so each individual has within himself an 
object of e>:istence and at the same time serves 
the common object, which is inaccessible to hu- 
man reason. 

A bee, flying from flower to flower, stings a 
child, and the child is afraid of bees, declaring 
that their object in this world is to sting people. 

The poet admires the bee drinking from the 
calix of a flower, and assures us that the object 
of bees is to breathe the perfume of flowers. 

The apiarist sees that the bee gathers pollen 
and the juices of plants to nourish the queen 



190 



NAPOLEON'S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 



and the larvae, and he decides that the object 
of bees is the continuation of their species. 

A botanist, observing that the bee bears the 
fecundating dust from one flower to the pistils 
of another, assures us that the object of bees is 
fertilization. 

Another botanist, seeing that the transmigra- 
tion of plants is favored by the bee, declares 
that the object of the insect is discovered in 
that mission. 

But the real object of the bee is not included 
in the first or the second or the third, or in any 
of the objects that the wisdom of man can dis- 
cover. 

The more he seeks to determine this final ob- 
ject, the more evident it is that the object is in- 
accessible to man. 

All he can do is to observe the correlation 
existing between the life of the bee and the 
other phenomena of nature. 
fr-Man is surrounded by the same limitations, 
in searching for the final object of events or 
historical personages; the final object is wholly 
beyond his reach. -^ , 



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These famous stories, which delighted and Instructed che last two generations, seem 
destined to be no less popular with the young people of the present. Their natural 
healthiness will always be appreciated by all children. 



TWELVE NOTABLE BOOKS. 



1. EMINENT AUTHORS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. -By Dr. Georq 

Brandes. i2mo. I.3.00. A series of essays upon the works of John Stuart Mill, 

Hans Christian Andersen, Ernest Renan, Gustave Flaubert, and other European 

writers. 

"The book is one of the most valuable of this decade." — Traveller. 

2. THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. By Professor Richard T. Ely. 

i2mo. #1.50. 

" No one who wishes to understand the problems of labor and capital can afford to 
be without Professor Ely's work." — Rochester Chronicle. 

"The subject has been his specialty for probably a dozen years, and it is safe to say 
that he is more thoroughly and intimately acquainted with it than any other man m the 
country." — LaiKaster hitelligencer, 

3. DEAD SOULS. By Nikolai V. Gogol. 2 vols. i2mo. $2.50. 

" One of the great novels of this century." — Beacon. 

"The work of a thoughtful mind, keen, vigorous, and fertile." — Nation. 

4. THE MARQUIS OF PENALTA. By Don Armando Palacio Valdes. ismo. 

$1.50. 

"Any one who wishes to know what Spanish life really is should read 'The Marauis 
ofPenalta.'" 

" I know of nothmg either in ancient or modern novel-writing more natural, charming, 
attractive, than the graphic narrative of ' The Marquis of Penalta.' " — Geo. Parsons La- 
throp 171 the iST. V. Star. 

5. MEDITATIONS OF A PARISH PRIEST. By Joseph Roux. i3mo. ^1.35. 

" Bright, crisp, incisive, and suggestive." — Buffalo Express. 

" Very brilliant, very sagacious, and delightfully unconventional." — i5^^c«7«. 

6. ST. JOHN'S EVE. By Nikolai V. Gogol. i2mo. $1.25. 
" Wonderfully fascinating. " — Interior. 

"Tlie imaginative power and beauty wrought into this story proves Gogol's claim to 
be an artist in literature." — Traveller. 

7. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. By Feodor M. Dostoyevsky. i2mo. $1.50. 

" One of the most moving of modern novels." — Albany Press. 

" A book of extraordinary power, a work of genius." — Christian Union. 

8. TARAS BULBA. By Nikolai V. Gogol. i2mo. ^r.oo. 

" For grandeur, simplicity of conception and superbness of description can hardly be 
equalled."— A^. V. Times. ^ f f j 

9. CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, AND YOUTH. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. i2mo. 

li.So. 

" These exquisite sketches belong to the literature which never grows old, which lives 
forever m the heart of humanity as a cherished revelation."— Zzz'^rarj/ IVorld. 

10. ANNA KARENINA. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. i2mo. ^1.75. 

" Will take rank among the great works of fiction of the age." — Portland Transcript. 
" As you read on you say not, ' This is like life, but. This is life.' "— W^. D. Howells. 

IL GREAT MASTERS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By M. Ernest Dupuy. 

i2nno. $1.25. 

" This volume, with its clear outlines of the lives and works of Gogol, Turgenief, and 
Tolstoi, will be found a most available and useful hand-book." — Traveller. 

12. MY RELIGION. By Count Lyof N, Tolstoi. i2mo. $1.00. 

" A book which should go to every household where the New Testament is read."— = 
N. Y. Sun. 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 13 Aster Place, If ew York. 



ools of Perimeiit f ortli ani Eiirii Value. 



ROaET'S THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES. .Classified 

and arranged so as to facilitate the expression of ideas and assist in literaiy 
composition. New Edition. Revised and enlarged by the author's son, J. L. 
Roget. Crown Svo, cioth extra, $2.00. 

A DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS FROM THE POETS. Based upon that of 
Henry G. Bohn. Revised, corrected, and enlarged b}^ the addition of over 1200 
quotations. With index of authors, chronological data, and concordance index. By 
Anna L. Ward. Introductory preface by R. H. Stoddard. 

Crown Svo, bevelled boards, cloth, $2.50; interleaved edition, cloth, $3.50; half calf 
or half morocco, $5.00. 
"The more competent the critic who examines it, the heartier will be his favorable 

verdict." — Coiigregatiotialist. 

INITIALS AND PSEUDONYMS. A Dictionary of Literary Disguises. By Wil- 
liam CusHiNG, A.M. Giving the nonis de phune and real names of nearlj^ 7,000 
authors, with brief notices, date of writer's birth and death, etc. Royal Svo, cloth, 
^500; half morocco, $7.50. 
"A book for which every man of letters will be grateful. Of inestimable value to 

literary students and journalists, and ought to be in every libraiy in the world." — N. Y. 

Mail and Express. 

CAMBRIDGE BOOK OF POETRY. AND SONG. Selected from English and 
American authors. Collected and edited by Charlotte F. Bates, of Cambridge, 
compiler of "The Longfellow Birthday Book," "Seven Voices of Sympathy," etc. 
With a steel portrait of Longfellow, and 16 full-page illustrations, from original 
designs. Royal Svo, cloth, gilt edges, $5.00; half moroc, gilt, I7.S0; full moroc, 
gilt, $10.00; tree calf, gilt, $12.00. 
" Eminently useful as a book of reference for those who write and those who are 

making a special study of poetical literature." — Boston Transcript. 

TENNYSON'S POEMS. A New and Complete Edition. Illustrated by Church, 
DiELMAN, ScHELL, Harry Fenn, and other artists. With portrait, 24 full-page 
illustrations, and vignette titles, engraved by Andrew. Uniform in style with the 
Cambridge Book of Poetry. The finest edition of Tennyson ever published in 
this country. Royal Svo, cloth, gilt, $5 00 ; morocco, $10.00; tree calf, $12.00. 
"One of the most superb books of any time. " — News, Indianapolis. 

HER MAJESTY'S TOWER. By W. Hepworth Dixon. A History of the Tower 
of London. From the seventh London edition. 2 vols. i2mo, with 47 illus- 
trations, $3.50; half calf, $7.50. 
•' The most complete story of this historic structure there is in existence." — Hartford 

Post. 

PRINCES, AUTHORS AND STATESMEN OF OUR TIME. By Canon Fanar, 
James T. Fields, and other popular writers. Edited by James Parton. Sixty illustra- 
tions, I vol., Svo, cloth, $2.75. 

"The high character of the writers is a guaranty of its general excellence and trust- 
worthiness." — Detroit Post. 

MULLER'S LIFE OF TRUST. With an introduction by Francis Wayland. New 
Edition. Enlarged and illustrated. i2mo. $1.50. 

LIFE AND EPISTLES OF SAINT PAUL. By Conybeare and Howson. With 

maps and illustrations. i2mo. $1.50; cheap edition, without illustrations, $1.00. 

" A marvel of Scripture Biography." — Spitrgeon. 
GEORGE ELIOT'S POEMS. Illustrated edition, with 16 full-page illustrations by 

Garrett, St. John Harper, and others. Engraved by Geo. T. Andrew. Svo, cloth, 

full gilt, $4.50; full morocco, $9.00 : tree calf, $9.00. 

"Nothing better need be asked for in the form of a presentation book." — Provi- 
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RED LETTER POEMS. By English men and women from Chaucer down to the 

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" By far the best collection of English Poetry ever made." — H. T. Suddnrt — Ohio 
University. 

THOMAS y. CROWELL & CO., 13 Aster Place, New Tork. 



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